Looking over the vast expanse of the wet garden, I notice the tiniest of things. A raindrop on a petal, but there’s something special about this raindrop, it has the inverted image of a tree. Our tree. It looks as if the tree is pressed into the drop, preserved forever in its glass encasing. Albeit, upside down.
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I notice the branches and how they look like veins on a person’s wrist. Like the ones on your wrist, the ones that got cut. The branches are millions of tributaries extending from the main stream, reaching up to the sky, finding out who will make it there first.
I think back to the times when these branches used to be filled with bright green leaves, a million million of them carefully placed on the branches by the hands of God. I remember playing under it, climbing it… with you. I remember when we used to have a competition of who could pick from the highest branch. You always won because you were taller. But, now, you’re in the hands of God.
Do you remember how it used to sway in the bustling wind and we’d laugh because we thought that we would get blown away? I do. I remember every sweet memory under that tree. Like the time we pretended to be pilots and the tree was our plane. Or when mum used to shout at us and we would hide up there.
Now, it just sits there like a giant piece of bark. The leaves growing and dying over and over again, like a phoenix. Why couldn’t you have been a phoenix? Then you would still be here and I would still be happy. The man with the blower came a few weeks ago. We used to jump in the pile of leaves he was racking. Do you remember him? He came and patted me on the back.He looked sorry for something, but I didn’t know what is was. Maybe he lost something like the way I lost you. Then I sat by the cold window, watching him clear the leaves. Alone.
I found you in your room. There was blood soaking into the carpet. So much blood. Where did it all come from? Mum came up, she pulled me out the room and started screaming. There was a note on your desk that she didn’t let me read. What did the note say? Mum said that it said that you loved me. If you loved me then why did you leave? The doctors said that you had cut your wrists. Why did you do that? Was it necessary? You could have stayed. For me.
I remember your funeral, mum couldn’t stop crying. Everyone had this sad look on their faces like it was their fault you were dead. But it wasn’t their faults, no. It was the others, the ones that bullied you and called you names. I heard about it from the other kids. The older ones. They told me that was the reason you cut yourself.
The house is scarier now that you’re gone. It always creeks at night and the windows rattle. Mum is sadder too. Sometimes she doesn’t even realise that I’m talking to her. And dad’s always at work...oh, and one other things. The tree’s dying without you here.
