Witness Tree

First day of fall, of autumn, and it was dark out. Which must mean she was up too early. Dark meant night meant sleep, and she was awake. Awake and drinking coffee, as if....as if? As if she were glad to be up, looking at the silent trees. Well, tree, the one tree, the old pine he'd planted so long ago, when they were giddy new home owners.

He'd insisted on that tree, that specific tree, at the nursery, against her concerns, her comments, well, really her criticisms. "It's squat," she had said, "branches too low to the ground, nothing...nothing...truly majestic."

"Majestic!" he'd laughed. "Majestic? Well, it will grow, and we'll grow with it, have babies who will become children, who will climb that tree, easily, first branch low to the ground, and. .."

"Like an invitation?" she'd said, meaning it as a problem, a warning, a preventable danger to their precious unborn children.

"Yes!" he'd shouted, as he always did when he was happy, excited and happy. "Yes--it's perfect!"

So they...he...bought the tree, planted it in the scraggly yard of the house, that house, their house. And the children came, climbed the tree, nobody fell, no bones broken, and now, they were gone too, one to each coast, and she was left with the old tree, branches still too low, grazing the ground, bent with age, but low enough she saw, as if for the first time, branches low enough for her to walk between the them, to breathe in the earthy smell of plant and to be embraced by tree.

The branches brushed against her as she entered, surrounded her, and hugged her when she made it to the trunk, the bark rough and familiar on her cheek.

"Still here," she said. "Still here. Both of us, still here."