To A Summer Fling, From A Winter's Devotion

It's time to reconcile with the tree.

Enough time has passed. Avoiding things gives me indigestion and I’ve been avoiding that tree since last winter. The last time I saw it, its naked limbs looked angry, like a hand reaching out to grab justice from the world. Looking at it seemed too intimate so I looked away and never looked back, but I need to go back because of time. Time stopped when I left it behind. And I need to go back for you. You promised to meet me there.

I woke up from a deep sleep a week ago on a blistering December morning. My head felt soft and brown cheese stained my breath. From the moment my lids creaked open I regretted how much distance had stretched between us. Images of you, me, and the tree pulsed in my mind’s eye.

I set out to meet you, a sweaty breakfast sandwich in my hand, but I stopped just before I reached the park - your home. You know I can’t eat. The food was for you but my feet couldn’t carry me closer, knowing all I could offer was limp words with limp meat. I returned home and stared at the sandwich as my stomach turned on itself.

From the moment I met you, I was already exhausted by the effort it would take to forget you. You walked up to me filling my belly with pupil-black coffee. I was shaking on the park bench. You didn’t even ask to sit, you simply glanced at the space my bag occupied as if you owned it. As if you were the only candidate fit to fill the position of ‘Next To Me’. That position remained unfilled for a long time after you left but then, to my horror, one day I awoke to find the emptiness replaced by a cliff’s edge.  

Thinking back to the first (and last) time we spoke, I cringe. For a long while, as we sat and talked side by side, my eyes couldn’t match your face. Your smile was cruel and bright and it gave me confusing appetites for juice that wasn’t in season. All my waking days have been spent shaking like a wolf without a pelt. Hearing you speak of July made me believe that healing could be found in the feel of honeydew streaking down a chin. I burned for all my skirts to float in the breeze of your voice. For those few hours, you used your powers for good and wore your passions so freely, I began to distrust my own. All of a sudden, I was hurt and the cold made no effort to console me.  

Everything moves like mud in the hot months. The days bleed on longer than they should and it makes me want to peel my skin. The only place not stuck in time is my house so I never leave. Year after year, I slump into my hibernation and only come out when the last leaf has drained from the last tree branch. The Winter wakes me with a howling lullaby and with chattering teeth, I unbandage myself from this yearly interruption.

Whenever I emerge in the Winter, people ask me where I’ve been. They ask lazy questions. But this year they asked something different. They asked, “What happened to you?” They knew. They could tell I’ve become something different since you touched me with your summertime. 

Who knew I was hungry my entire life? You were the first person who taught me there are ways to eat other than through a mouth. From the moment you spoke of your hometown, my senses roamed. I started tasting honeydew with my hands, and I held you in my eyes. To this day, my tongue can only hear the words it longs to speak. With you (for you) I didn’t mind being wrong-side up. But then you shook your head and you said, “It’s December,” like the month was a canyon you couldn’t cross. You said the Winter didn’t agree with you and then you left. And I was lost. 

But life still holds little joys. There’s this one spot above my bed, if I stare at it hard enough, everything in my vision softens into a gentle haze and the room starts swimming. I breathe deeply and sometimes my whole body blinks. The blankets swallow me and I feel like chocolate on a patient tongue. I imagine this is what a lot of sea life must feel like: the mussels, the barnacles, the starfish. They know they are melting into something big and deep and infinite. But they are not fighting to know the unknowable. They’re not like humans; human minds build condominiums on Mars. Human imaginations hunt without a license. I’m embarrassed by the things I’ve failed to hang on my wall.

I never paid much thought to where my umbilical cord might be. I remember, when we talked you told me about a people group that believes that if you stray too far from your cord, you won’t be able to find your way back to the spirit world when you die. Back. The notion that you go backward when you die is a plaguing thing. Then, following that vein, the afterlife is not so much an after-life but a before-life or a pre-life or maybe life is a journey interrupted. Anyway, you knew exactly where your cord was and I have a theory. I think we search for these cords, these ties, while we’re still living. Specifically, while we dream. I don’t sleep during the winter (my waking months), so there’s too much time for theories. But I think that’s why, in my sleep, I search for you.

This all crashed on top of me in the produce aisle. I have chronic scurvy and it got me thinking of how I’ve never felt fruit from a tree — always from a book or a bottle. I’ve never held flesh with flesh. Walking down the aisle, surrounded by all these orphaned jewels of the earth, my chest caught fire. It dawned on me that we’ve all been separated from our trees. I wept for them all; dispossessed, repossessed. I bought as many crates as my body could hold.

All this to say, I wrote this letter because I write letters now. Letters are the only way I’m understood. Since we touched, every word muscled out of my mouth sounds like gargling mouthwash and I need to make sure I reach you. This letter is for you. Don’t be afraid to pry it from my hands, no matter how frozen; no matter how painful touching death may be.

Last year, you sat with me in that park, on that bench, under that tree and I rearranged. I can no longer stay in my season. To stay in Winter is to stay in denial.

The truth is, this past Summer I couldn’t properly ooze into oblivion because my dreams reached for you like an earring in a purse crease. And even though I can’t dream in my waking months, my fantasies grow violent. I hunt for your face amidst the grey brushstrokes of my memories. 

And I’ve avoided the tree because we talked for hours under the tree. And then you walked away. I spoke with you once and then never again, but I hold onto the last words you said before retreating ant-sized into the distance: “I’ll see you around.” 

And that’s why I need to go back. Back to the tree. The tree is the cord tying every season together. And that’s why my senses are restless and that’s why the fruit is homeless. Our meeting was my life’s journey interrupted. You are the cord that is strangling to find me and there is only one place where you and I agreed.

It’s time to reunite with those branches that have been dappled by sun and dolloped in snow. The tree, with its trunk as wide as the world, has room for us both there. Finally, you’ll know what it means to shiver with me and I’ll know what it means to bite honeydew with you. 

You will see me around. 

I'll be exactly where you'll look for me. 

My body will find its forever, wrapped around our tree.