A Story For the Trees

She sat outside staring at the light until he finally joined her, dreaming of stories for the trees. Maybe their love was as ancient and twisted as the branches casting shadows of worn sadness. She sat on the step with tears in her eyes dripping definitions of the word ‘struggle’ onto the painted concrete. He stepped outside and saw the streetlamp glistening on her cheeks and wrapped in muggy cold. He simply sat down and put his arm around her. “It’s stuffy inside,” she muttered, but she meant to say “My heart hurts.” They often held conversations in thoughts and words and actions and hearts and tears and they always got lost in translation and lost in each other. Lost in longing, lost in distance, lost in a love full of distractions. He hated the place, but she loved it because every inch of this land is something to be fought for. There have been generations of warriors born to fight for their land. There have been years and years of longing to keep your heart where your stories are born. She had always wondered what the stories were for the land she walked on. Who had moved to let the trees sit still in sorrow? What were their prayers like and could God still hear them as they were cut off from the umbilical cord that gave them life? Her heart hurt looking at the trees and thinking of the lines of people that had fought for them once upon a time, and the ones that are still fighting for them. Her heart hurt because they were fighting. They were fighting for a place - for a time. Fighting for togetherness. Her heart hurt because they never knew when they would see each other next. Wondering when his arm would drape her shoulder and pull her deeply into his chest as they breathed in and sighed together. All he could say was ‘Yeah it is’. Maybe he meant ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I want to take you away with me and keep you for the rest of time’. Maybe he meant ‘I don’t know what to do’ or ‘you’re the best girl I’ve met’ or ‘How much longer can we do this?’ No matter the translation, they both wanted nothing more than to have more nights to sit together on the front step. The house across the street was still abandoned from the days when everybody had to leave to survive, and now they fight to come back. The lawn was overgrown and the window still dirty from storm water, but the house looked feisty under these sad trees. A fresh ‘no trespassing’ sign sat out front and the street lamp gave its face some shadow to keep watch in the thick air. The house was fighting for itself, waiting for its owner to come back and lick its wounds. It had good teachers, since it all the trees sat around it, teaching it a toughness that can only come from losing love, and loving loss, since it reminds you that the soul is not shallow. They sat and misinterpreted each other fluently, but still commuting feelings, like their own language made up from too many nights apart. Yet through the translations, they still had some words that were solid, as they are in any language. ‘I love you very much’ he said to her. They knew love, but the also knew distance. They know the word ‘far’ could be measured in the difference in the circumference of your arms around a pillow instead of a person. It was everything else that was hard to understand. She spoke in words of ‘when’ and he spoke in the language of ‘soon’. You’d be surprised how often those words don’t match up. Maybe with enough time together they can draft their own language of hugs and smiles at breakfast that come from the happiness of taking care of each other. Maybe one day their language will be as old as those of the trees. ‘I want to write a story for the trees’ she said. She wanted to write a story about struggle and time and age and roots and fighting and warriors and longing and homeland and love and connectedness and faith and tears and happiness. She wanted to write a story in tears on the concrete so the trees could look down and remember the girl that cried for them, that longed for something as rooted as them, that wanted a renewal with them as the seasons changed. She wanted to write a story about a sad happiness she couldn’t understand, except maybe in time after their fighting for a place had ceased. But maybe she misinterpreted. Maybe she meant to write a story about them. They stood up and walked inside.