By Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

The body grows thick with silence, its branches heavy with things unseen. Trauma happens this way, quietly, like a tree, growing layer by layer, ring by ring, marking time in the body. A year passes, another autumn comes, and the tree stands in the same place, but never the same. Bark thickens, leaves fall, the body remembers. Trauma doesn’t speak loudly, at first. It lives in the creases of skin, in the small scars that no one sees. It is a slow burn, a fire long before the wood. A silent ember lodged deep inside the trunk, hidden from view but alive, smoldering.

Some trees never grow leaves again. They become twisted in their waiting, holding the shape of themselves but without the life they once carried. Old and gnarled, they become the memory of what they were. The bark splits, the roots dry, and the sun casts shadows through branches that no longer offer shade. This is how trauma takes shape—by turning life into an echo, a desperate labor of survival, where the body holds the weight of what has been lost.

It is easy to forget the beginning. The first cut is always small, barely noticeable. A crack in the bark, a tiny tear where the sap bleeds. But over time, the wounds multiply, and the tree becomes a map of itself, scarred and broken. Trauma is held this way, in the layers of bark and bone, until the body itself becomes a monument to pain.

When the axe comes, it strikes clean, splitting the wood open. The tree falls, but the memory remains. Each ring tells a story—of seasons passed, of winds endured, of rains that never came. The body holds these stories too, in muscles and sinew, in the curve of a spine, the bend of a knee. Trauma becomes part of the architecture, built into the very structure of being.

The brambles shake. Seed tears fall with every strike of the axe, each one carrying the weight of what was left behind. Trauma is never just about the one body. It is transmitted, passed down like an inheritance. A parent’s fall plants itself in the child, a scar growing on the graves of those who came before. The body holds not only its own pain, but the pain of generations, buried deep in the roots, waiting to surface.

There is a strange comfort in the way trees hold trauma. They never move, but they grow. Slowly, quietly, they adapt to the scars, the missing branches, the hollow spaces where once there was life. Some trees are cut down and turned into paper, their bodies split and mulched, spread thin and smooth. But even then, the memory of the tree remains. The paper holds the mark of the axe, the weight of the fall. Trauma, like the tree, is transformed but never erased.

The body is no different. It bears the signature of every wound, every loss. Skin wrinkles and dries, bones grow brittle, but the memory remains. Trauma lives in the bones, in the muscles, in the way the body moves through the world. It is held in the tension of shoulders, in the tightness of a jaw, in the way breath catches in the chest. The body remembers, even when the mind forgets.

But trauma is not the end. It is a beginning, too. A scar is a mark of survival, a testament to what has been endured. The body grows around it, like a tree growing around a fallen branch, twisting itself into new shapes. Life continues, even when it feels impossible. The sun rises, and the dew rests on the leaves. Tomorrow comes, bringing with it the promise of something new.

The tree that was once split by the axe now sends out roots, digging deep into the earth. New leaves sprout from old branches, small and fragile but full of life. The body, too, heals in its own way. The scars remain, but they are no longer the whole story. Trauma is held, but it is also transformed. It becomes part of the body’s architecture, a reminder of what was lost, but also of what was gained.

In the end, everything that grows hard toward the sun is reaching for the stars. The body, like the tree, strives upward, always searching for light. Even in the darkest moments, when the weight of trauma feels unbearable, there is a small spark of hope. The tree stands, even in its brokenness. The body endures, even in its pain. Tomorrow will come, and with it, the dew will rest on the open hands of new leaves, a quiet reminder that life continues, that healing is possible.

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Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi, a black writer, won SEARCH Magazine’s 4th Annual Poetry Contest and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. His work appears in POETRY, Strange Horizons, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere.