whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood

A tree made of bones and sinew and tendons, unable to move with the biting wolf-wind because I am cemented down with ice. My ice. I made it.

To keep people like you out. I don't like you. I don't want you.

I want to grow, blossom into a tree of rose-petals and peridot leaves. And for that I need you. I need thoughts and poetry and rage and hate and love.

Until then, I am a sapling, winter-crippled, whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood.

(I saw a vague red tinge to the bare skeletal trees and mistook the glow of new growth for a few tenacious leaves clinging to the only limbs they'd ever known.)

It is spring, and I think I should remember this being a time for growth instead of death.