Maybe one day I will walk up to the tree and be moved by the craftsmanship of the caterpillar’s mouth as it feeds to transform. I’ll stand in wonder of the snow-likeness of mealybugs and the near perfect formation of ants in their defiance to gravity.
In the right hand corner of my childhood home, stands a tree. I don’t know its name or nature nor do I wish to. All I know is that it is the deepest shade of green I have ever seen.
In the rainy seasons, when clouds part to allow the thinnest rays to touch the ground, I liked to stand on the veranda and watch them move through each blade of grass. Slowly and intentional, until they reached the freshly fertilized dirt and up the darkened stem to the highest sitting leaf. It was breath taking.
I approached the tree once, desperate to take in its beauty up close. To feel the moisture of the leaves between my fingertips. What I felt instead, was the wax of mealybugs and the march of black ants crawling up the sappy stem. The pristine leaves, browned with wounds large enough for my fingers to slip through. It was clear to my young eyes that the tree was dying, as all things did, so the next time it rained I stayed on my veranda and watched.
My home wasn’t lacking in trees. Just a meter from that very tree were two more of its kind. Maybe it was where it stood, tucked in a corner that nobody ever visited or maybe it was because a tree’s life was never meant to be so short. I don’t know. The truth is, as the veil of youth quickly fell from my eyes and the ones I once thought larger than mundane began to shrink to my height, with their humanity bare as the summer sky, I was desperate to cling to distance. To mystery. To wonder. To the lies only worthy of children’s ears. To a tree that could never fall sick.
Maybe the flaws, no- the life, of that tree had always been obvious. Perhaps there’s a way to see beauty from up close, but I find that what I wish to be beautiful is the unknown. The impossible rather than what is. Maybe one day I will walk up to the tree and be moved by the craftsmanship of the caterpillar’s mouth as it feeds to transform. I’ll stand in wonder of the snow-likeness of mealybugs and the near perfect formation of ants in their defiance to gravity. Or maybe i'll just uproot the tree all together. Plant in its stead, a patch of grass and allow the memory of the tree (at a distance) to hold me through the silence that follows the rain.