Glossy, cordate. Hold it up it’s a flame, hold it down it’s a heart. She knows not to skim the commonly seen section at the front and flicks straight to the exotic, lesser known and migrant species. Combs all four of these pages, cross-referencing leaf and picture, squinting as she examines the finely drawn tree parts in her reference book, grimacing as her fingertips remember the touch of the bark. She has her own terms for categorising the skin of trees. Was it soft, pulled tight, like her father’s hand when he picked her up from school that day? She knew it was bad news when she saw it was him, not Gran, and of course he had forgotten her after-school snack. Was it coarser, like the dad of her teenage years? They didn’t hold hands then of course but she saw the skin grow flakier, the knuckles redder, Mum’s rosehip hand cream left unused in the bathroom cabinet. Was it like his hands when she was in her twenties? Veins raised like a blind man’s map, but softer skin again now he no longer did jobs around the house, never lifted anything heavier than a page. Or was it the thin, blueing hand of his last days? The hand she could hold again, not fingers entwined but just palm resting light as breath on palm, a pressure that meant presence, unsaid words that meant I’m here until you leave me. She came to the last page of the rare species and admired again her leaf, its sheen, its strength, its admirable independence away from the mother tree, little knowing that tomorrow it would be cracked and drying out. “Dear Dad,” she whispered in her mind, “I think I have found a new species of tree.”

About PR Woods

PR Woods writes short stories, flash, poems, blogs and journalism. Her work has appeared in Out of the Pen, the May Anthologies, Delayed Gratification and the Guardian, with a new short story forthcoming in the Manchester Review.

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