The pain tree feeds on pain. Its roots grow deep into the world and absorb its pain, pulling it through xylem and phloem, fusing hot liquid pain into protective bark and wood.
The pain tree, like other trees, fixes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releases oxygen. The air is purified and cooled, like the soil.
The pain tree has no leaves. It is large, wide and towering. No branches spring from its trunk until such a height as humans cannot damage themselves on them. They weave into each other, black and twisted.
The pain tree grows everywhere humans leave their pain, that is, it is found everywhere. The pain tree is in no danger of extinction.
The pain tree, when the season is right, and when it has been given enough of the world’s hurt, blossoms in flowers so brilliant that under them one may forget if it is day or night.
PAINTREE, in short, is absolutely not a portmanteau of “painting” and “poetry”, although coincidentally those are the professions of artist Dana Robins and poet Sean Roberts, the creators of this page. Both are Americans living in Paris, who after the recent election decided to sublimate the year’s anxiety into beauty, or at least attempt to. Modeled after Routine Fables.