what trees become

thisbe is showing me around her house-- it must be her house in new york, for her mother lives there, too. it's full of little triangular nook & cranny rooms with rocking chairs and desks and doors that open to the outside shady spaces under the trees.

I have a hideaway up a kind of petrified tree inside the building right above the most populous room. I have a difficult time swinging myself up to climb the branches, and I wonder how I've done it so many times before-- is there another way, or am I just getting old? once I'm up there, bits of paper slip down into the notches of the branches and onto the floor below-- they are old love letters, and I have to climb back down to rescue them before anyone reads them.

my family is clearing out my parents' house, and I have to go pick up odds and ends-- old clothes and things inherited from our grandmother-- mostly old china I don't even want.

I'm scooping up handfuls of large nails and a crowbar with some dire intent-- I don't even know what it is. I walk toward where I think my car is parked, past some kids and people on the neighborhood street, and then realize that isn't my car at all and have to circle back. the house is in a severe state of disrepair. there's a recent snow on the ground, but it must have been raining for days previously because the ground is all soft mud. I'm crossing up the driveway to where the car may be parked at the back when my feet squish down in the morass. at one time the driveway was bricked, but many of the bricks have gone missing, leaving a pool of black mud. I walk farther back, gingerly along the scattered bricks, until I can see there is no car parked back there. then I reach down and fish up a couple of old logs out of the mud and stand them against the fence. they look like gnarled old men, and I realize they are people, sleeping, whom I must awaken through some arcane process. there is writing across their foreheads, and it seems to mean something to me.