Mother ((new)) | Sakura Sakurada

“This is where I learned to hate beautiful things,” she said, not to me, but to the air. “My father spent all our money planting these trees. He said a man who grows beauty cannot be poor. My mother starved while he pruned branches.”

I touch the trunk. It is rough, scarred, cool from the morning rain. I press my forehead against it.

She turned to me. Her eyes were the color of the bark. “I named you Sakura so you would not have to choose. You can be the blossom. I will be the trunk.” sakura sakurada mother

I am Sakura. Named for the blossom itself. She used to say she planted me in the shadow of her name, so I would always know where the sun was.

She taught me that a cherry tree’s beauty is not in the falling petal, but in the bark. The gnarled, scarred, dark bark that survives the winter. “This is where I learned to hate beautiful

And I finally understand. She was never the Sakurada. She was the mother who held up the sky so one small cherry blossom could have room to fall. Not with grace. With gravity.

One spring, when I was eleven, she took me to the old Sakurada plot. Nothing was left but a cracked foundation and one enormous, ancient cherry tree. The house had burned down a decade before I was born. She stood beneath it, the wind pulling strands of gray from her black hair. My mother starved while he pruned branches

She died last winter. Quietly. In that same single room. A cough she ignored for too long, then a sudden stop.