Haibun: Between Pink Stained Fingers
By Christine Novelero, 16, Texas
There’s a crab apple tree in my backyard. It’s been there for twenty years, four years older than I. My parents planted it the week they moved into our house—when they put down roots, yet undecayed. It’s the reason I love Japan, despite being Filipina in blood both hot and cold. For the longest time, I thought it was a cherry blossom. A sakura. My mother reminded me, thrice, that it was a crab apple tree. It’s the reason I love spring, despite senseless seasonal allergies. I would spring to the window every morning upon February’s turn, awaiting pastel pink blooms amidst bare branches. It’s the reason I know I’m older in a house that has hardly changed. Wondrous impatience departed, I no longer stalk the pink blooms: they stalk upon me. I open the window curtains, the one chore that’s always been mine, and whisper, “Is it spring already?” The days between pink blossoms, green foliage, autumn drapery, and bare branches only grow shorter.
pink petals, hands grazed:
the “barely” of grasped by fingers
too full to feel
I wrote this piece with two things in mind. The first was a desire to honor the ordinary, to commemorate the sorta-traditions. When it comes to “sorta-traditions,” watching the crab apple tree outside our big backyard window bloom every spring is at the top of my list. The second was that I only have one more year of high school. Next spring will likely be the last before I leave the crab apple tree behind for good. With this in mind, I sought to capture both a sense of ephemerality and a picturesque quality in my writing.
The title of my poem refers to the haibun, which is a Japanese literary form consisting of a prose poem followed by a haiku. A haibun typically focuses on a scene from nature with the intent of capturing “aware,” a Japanese term which refers to a sense of fleeting beauty. That intent lined up with both of the main elements that I sought to capture in my writing, hence why I chose that form.
