Yesterday, my father dug out the roots of the dead tree in the yard.

He planted a plum tree,

young and veinless, the bark so thin that I peel off strips and fold paper cranes

so the tree can grow wings

when its leaves are soaked dry of purple bruise, when its bitter juices seep into the ground,

the cold begins to pierce the stale air

through vacant branches, I think more and more of the paper scars on his hands,

how his skin is a web of blistered veins

how winter burns into his mournful laugh, when at last I am the one breathing in frostbite

spreading from limb to limb.

A year ago, my father cut off the stems of the withered flowers in the house.

He potted orchids,

pale and spineless, the petals translucent in the sun like a sheet of paper held to the light.

I soak the pieces in salt water,

so the ink bleeds into the threadbare curtains, so the dye seeps through the clouded window,

so in February I begin to imagine

red embroidery on his eyes before the orchids bloom, a spring without snow but the rain is always

something he never forgets,

through the whistle of the boiling kettle, the bird cries heard at waking, I knew I was too young

to remember meeting him.

When I was younger, my father tore out the wrinkled pages of the coloring book.

He drew a forest

on the empty pages left inside, graphite smudging his bony knuckles

like sketches of ash and soil

that littered the grass with cast-aside feathers—the scraps of these snow-blown paper cranes

we used to fly like kites,

until his hands were caught in the strings, as the birds tugged on his swaying, dancing frame,

and I could almost see

a plum tree, an orchid, and a forest, all blooming and yellowing underneath the weak sun

like strange corpses from the sky.