people are no different to trees | Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

Feb 17, 2025

People are no different from trees, even in the wild they are pruned by nature, via the gale, the wind, and the rain, the occasional hailstorm. Human Beings need nourishment in all forms, for our body, it varies from culture to culture, from family to family. Feeding the human spirit is no different, we dance, we sing, we read poetry, and stories.

Through all these sessions of nourishment is the shared intangible connection of the human heart. We forget how poisonous our heart has become if we leave it unchecked. We become the poison.

I am the poison first before I point my finger at anyone else. My father named me after a tropical forest tree. As I age I have embraced my namesake, as the rings on my trunk are added, I’m thicker, stronger. But if I ignore the rot in my heart, to the very root of the tree, I am destined to perish in slow agony, I am unaware of the insidious parasite of my creation.

There are those amongst us who feed on such parasites, they dwell and relish in it until they could never live without it. And before they could stop such hunger for darkness, they have become such, parasitic in nature, a parasite.

I will not tolerate it in myself, and I will not tolerate it in the heart of those I love. And I will discard those beyond this circle.

January 3rd, 2022

Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm, the blogger, poet, and translator, was born in 1971 in Phu Nhuan, Saigon, Vietnam. The pharmacist currently lives and works in Western Sydney, Australia.