The Shadows of the Trees

Amanda Chiado

I became addicted to potato chips after our trip to Chama when my dad sent me into the woods with a mustard-yellow bag of Lay’s. I was eight years old and a family of deer came toward me to tell me about the woods. The fawn put her entire head in the yellow bag and gobbled with abandon. I could feel her mouth, touching my hand from the inside of the bag. She was unafraid of her hunger or the startling sounds of packaging. My father only knew the language of food and my mother darkness, so I learned to fold in.  I was a deer every year for Halloween after that. On every birthday candle, I wished for the woods to swallow me. Even though my father is dead, he still regrets sending me out into the wild. He knows I’ll never come back from the shadows of the trees.

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Amanda Chiado won the Press 53 Poetry Award 2026 for her prose poetry collection Today I Wear the Bear Head. She is also the author of the chapbook Prime Cuts (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). She is the director of arts education at the San Benito County Arts Council and is a California Poet in the Schools. Read more of her work at www.amandachiado.com