Amongst the slender-stemmed crops on Donaldson’s concrete orchard,

a once-mighty tree whose fruit has long since turned sour,

 

awaiting to be axed for firewood. In its heyday,

 

The Willow of K-Mart was the perfect place to play pious white savior

by plucking cheap toys from disjointed aisle to disjointed aisle to put into

empty Skechers boxes that sat in the back of our closets and ship the package

to the children who made the very shoes that once called the cardboard container its home.

 

The Willow of K-Mart was the place where you got Little Caesar’s breadsticks

to loosen your baby teeth as your eight-year-old self watches The King and I

 

The Willow of K-Mart was the last place for fruit that you wanted

as its bounty was tainted by the tears of retail workers forced to eat their

Thanksgiving meals in tupperware, but it was the first place everyone

went for people that you didn’t actually care for but wouldn’t say that to them.

 

As the axe swings at the nape of the trunk, the air is thick yet no one bats an eye as it falls.