<\/p>\n
Hollow Years<\/strong><\/p>\n What carves away the insides? Here, inside the apple tree, each trunk\u00a0 is Though somehow the tree seems to carry on, keeps blooming each The wood is marbled, gnarled and dry, splintered into fragments that But in the third, still growing, just inside the opening, two roots at thick If you follow it with your eye, it rises into a low branch a child could swing upon<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miranda Lynn Barnes<\/strong> is a poet from the US, now living in the UK. Recent poems appear in The Compass<\/em>, The Interpreter\u2019s House<\/em>, and Confingo<\/em>. Miranda teaches at Bath Spa University, where she earned her PhD. Website: https:\/\/mirandalynnbarnes.wordpress.com\/\u00a0 <\/a>Twitter: @LuminousJune<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hollow Years What carves away the insides? Here, inside the apple tree, each trunk\u00a0 is rotted out, hollowed through. The emptiness kept growing when we weren\u2019t looking. Now everything hangs on a shell of bark. Though somehow the tree seems to carry on, keeps blooming each spring, weighing down these worn branches with fruit. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15648"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15656,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15648\/revisions\/15656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nrotted out, hollowed through. The emptiness kept growing when we
\nweren\u2019t looking. Now everything hangs on a shell of bark.<\/p>\n
\nspring, weighing down these worn branches with fruit. I kneel to get a
\ncloser look, and see the space inside is dark, and shadowed like a cave.<\/p>\n
\nlook like teeth and let through the light. Troughs and channels, tiny
\npinholes and cracks inside the bark tell the story of slow passage to
\ndecay. Shards of wood have dried to white or grey, giving the
\nappearance of splinters snapped and broken along the base.<\/p>\n
\nas my wrists cling along the back, snaking upwards from a fibrous tangle
\njust above the dark soil.<\/p>\n