Emergency Tree Hug © Marysia Lewandowska, May 2020
Marysia Lewandowska
Hugging a tree at a time of social distancing allows for emotional experience to expand beyond the human contact. In the ancient Chinese culture it is believed to release an exchange of energy between the earth and our bodies. It acts as a form of nourishment encouraging openness and affection. We owe this to nature, and to each other.
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Responses
Emergency Tree Hug
by Anna Giangiordano
I
I’ve hugged humans more wooden than this tree. I’ve felt their scared flesh harden under my touch and watched them shrink deep into their heartwood.
II
The imprint lasted on my cheek for three hours. I’d pressed it deep. Your bark-skin marked mine and I touched the ridged flesh over my cheekbone, a landscape in itself of our relationship, the ups and downs moulding who we were in each other’s orbit.
III
I rooted here. I sank through the soil and last-year leaves and where we meet, our fulcrum, swings wildly and slowing, rests.
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