john wood jr | d7 | cbd1

john pollard wood, jr.
eighteen
district seven

Love is: Long weeks at the logging site. Handing down your warmest coat, the full-grain leather one, a winter or two before it'll fit. Waking in the middle of the night to make sure no one misses the meteor shower. Concerned silence — only silence— over blackened eyes and bloodied noses. Falling asleep during the third grade play, because it means showing up at all, even after a 36-hour shift. Leaving the peas out of the chicken pot pie. Whittling lessons given maybe-too-soon. Piggyback rides given maybe-too-late. Flowers brought home twice a week and hung from the ceiling instead of shoved into a vase on the table, the living room perpetually a desiccated jungle of foxgloves and snapdragons and asters and sunflowers.

By these metrics, John Wood, Jr.'s father loved him from the day he was born. Loved his siblings. Loved his mother — before she disappeared, and every day since.

Snag is: Trees that still stand after they've died. Avulsed branches hanging on by little more than bark. Homes for dozens of species of birds and small mammals. Structurally unsound. Widowmaker branches. Deadfall.

Snag is: Exactly what punched a hole clear through John Pollard Wood, Sr.'s torso.

Snag is: An understatement.

Love is: Fistfights with Uncle York, with Uncle Gawain, with Aunt Morgaine the instigator, with each of John Sr.'s shitty brothers and sisters that saw fit to name themselves executor, to greedily claim for themselves the gabled two-story with no regard to the seven orphans who lived there. Letting the pet beaver into the house to make a dam out of the doorframes, a final fuck you to York when he tries to sell the place. Accepting the carpenter's apprenticeship offered to your twin, so that she can keep studying arboriculture.

Love is doing your best.