By RIS PAULINO
I scale the cracked shingles, the roof warm beneath my palms,
each grip a reminder that not all heights can be measured in feet.
The sun slips sideways, brushing against the window panes,
and I stand there, taller than the house that never grew with me.
I look off toward the sunset,
and see a treeline—
forever green—
like a promise whispered between branches.
I swing my legs over the edge and let go,
touching earth as if it were a secret kept,
running past fences and forgotten toys,
toward that treeline stitched into the sky.
I climb the mango tree the same way I climbed the roof—
hand over hand, knee scraping bark,
chasing a vantage point that changes nothing
but how the world looks when you’re above it.
Every leaf murmurs stories of shelter and loss,
both enduring and fleeting.
Forever green
until I see the branches above me,
fruit dangling just out of reach,
the vibrant boughs stretching high like distant dreams.
I stand beneath them, wondering if the birds share a secret laugh
when I fall short of their promised sweetness.
Do the leaves, in their silent assembly, envy the fruits
that catch fleeting rays of adoration,
their ripeness a brief spotlight in the vast canopy of time?
In that suspended moment, every sway of a branch
becomes a whispered question of desire,
each tender bud a reminder
that beauty and longing are entwined in the quest
for something just beyond my grasp.
Forever green
until thoughts drift to the hands I’ve never held,
the words I’ve never dared to whisper in the twilight’s hush.
Love, like unripe fruit clinging to a barren limb,
remains stubbornly bitter on my tongue,
a taste of what might have been,
lost in the silence of unspoken words,
and the loudness of words spoken.
The ache of absence winds through me like an unyielding vine,
each climb up life’s rough bark a quest to soften
the raw, unfulfilled yearning that clings to every memory.
Still, I ascend—ever patient, ever reaching—
forever green, caught between the hope of sweetness
and the bittersweet echo of dreams left untasted.
Between the climb and the fall of dusk,
there comes a quiet moment when hope yields—
each dream softening at its edges,
its vibrant green succumbing to twilight.
In this silent pause before night,
memories unfurl like delicate leaves on a gentle breeze,
each one a reminder that even passion must fade,
yet in its quiet descent lies a whisper
of renewal, a promise that the tender green endures.
Forever green,
you who once mirrored the endless sky,
your veins a soft, whispered blue
beneath skin that thinned like fading twilight
and eyes dulled with the weight of lost summers.
It’s been three years—three long cycles of sun and many more of moon—
and I find solace in knowing you’ve returned
to the earth’s quiet embrace, decomposed into memory,
a tender decay that nourishes the living,
forever green, cradled in the arms of time.
Writer | Ris Paulino ’25 | rpaulino25@amherst.edu
Editor | Hannah Koo ’25| hkoo25@amherst.edu