Merit Coba

I imagined a tree.

When it was young it grew rapidly into a tall tree with a wide trunk, thick bark and so many luscious dark-green leaves that our whole family could sit in its shade when the sun was at it’s most merciless during the heat of the summers day.

I imagined the tree.

When it started to loose the first leaf nobody noticed, because there were so many green ones and that one red-yellow leaf that floated to the ground at dusk, went unseen and was perhaps trod upon by one of our daughters during a game of tag or when flying a kite.

I imagined the tree.

When I was  in my long dark green gown with my red-brown hair being tugged by the wind, during the first storm of our fall and a cloud of red and yellow leaves – all so sudden dead –  was released and carried away just before the rain arrived.

I imagined that tree..

When it was old and gnarled and the limbs were like fingers on a hand grasping upwards as the frozen image of  the hand of a drowning swimmer reaching out in desperation or a skeletal hand pushing through the soil of a graveyard. The last of the leaves had long gone.

I imagine our tree.

When, the next year, after the snow has melted, trees would blossom again and cloak themselves in their emerald versatility, but ours will be like a bird that lost it’s feathers and shows only the withered frame of a creature that would never fly again. With each incident and each conflict another feather would be plucked from it’s body until that moment came that we both did not care about that stab in the heart when yet another moment in life  made us drift apart further.

That was our tree:the only tree we had together.