The Olive Branch

An olive branch is severed from the tree.

Oh, to replicate those days lost to time when laughter and joy at the new harvest was enough to fill your hollow ribs. The trees grow and stretch before you, soldiering through the unforgiving test of time, and fire, and violence. A sign of hope, and you stare and stare in wonder.

You wish to pick those olives, and you plan to savour every bite, reminiscing and remembering a time when they existed before lives were taken and the land was occupied.

How can you when you are killed for even trying? Picking the olives was meant to restore something in you and keep a tradition alive; maybe if you had picked those olives as your loved ones had, they could keep on living through you. Instead, there is grief and pain and olive trees that are uprooted and destroyed. Maybe an olive branch should be a symbol of freedom, or endurance or some kind of rebellion - if you can call the innate need to survive and sustain yourself rebellion.

The trees will stop growing, and the soil will dry out, and the olive branch will sit, still severed from the tree.