Sycamore Trees

Sycamore Trees

They sat together every day, holding hands shooting the breeze. Sitting under sycamore trees. They talked for hours every day, he knew the every workings of her mind. She liked his arms around her. He liked her lips. The breeze was always warm when he was happy and it rained when she cried. She believed that nature was tied to their emotions, he went with the pretty lie. She seemed to like a pretty lie, she liked pretty things like the sun and the sky. She always fell for pretty things especially sin in disguise. So they sat together and he told her all about pretty things. Always closing the day with a sweet nothing and a not-so-chaste kiss upon her lips. She thinks “I wish we could stay here forever” so she does her best to make it happen. Every day she would give him a little secret flower, hoping one day he’d have a bouquet. He would give her something in return, the little snippet of a star. She holds out, hoping one day for the Milky Way. He doesn't know how much she wants it, how often she paints the stars in her head. She doesn't know how much he hates it, how often their conversations sicken his head. He hated her but loved her convenience. She loved him but hated his willful ignorance. She believed she could fix him, he knew he was beyond repair. But despite all this they continued to sit, basking in secrets, being burned by the sun. 

Some days her head would snap out of it and her skin would begin to crawl, in his arms she would say no, to which he said yes, she said yes, and that was the end of it. She knew it was wrong, he knew it was wrong, but that never stopped anyone. So they would sit under sycamore trees and shoot the breeze like nothing was wrong. All while they rotted away. As time passed her skin was never calm and his eyes wandered less. He began to like her voice and the softness of her chest. She became less fond of lies and sweetness. She began to hate the burning of his arms and the roughness of his lips. She wanted more words and fewer touches upon her hips. 

The days turned colder and the trees lost their leaves. The sun went away and conversation was no longer swept far by the breeze. She pulled away, knowing that he would never be what she wants. He pulled closer because she was everything he could ever want. He longed for the flowers she used to place in the palm of his hands, missing the feeling of something so delicate and soft. She stopped giving them because she believed he was letting them rot. She slowly erased the stars from her head and pushed them back into his skin. She wanted to forget the little galaxies she built with the scrapes, she now knew, he had reluctantly given. She realized she never knew anything other than his lips or how he liked to hold her hips. She knew the way he liked to see her dress, she knew the things to wear to lure in a softer kiss. She knew all the things he liked. He thought he knew everything about her, he knew what colors looked best on her skin, and how her hair knotted in the wind. He knew the taste of her lips and the color of her eyes, the soft spots behind her ear, and how the tears pooled on her cheeks when she cried. He thought he knew all and she understood she knew nothing. 

She knew that he would never know the fight she put up to have him, she knew he would never care to learn. She understood that she was just a person, and it was too much to ask to be his; and at the end of the day, it was him who made her cry. It was he who made her scream. It was him that she wrote stories about, and it was him who made home no longer home. Understanding was something he never had, he never understood her head. He knew it, he remembered it, it was memorized on his lips. Just like the secret flowers, he had them, and saw them, and knew them, and yet he never understood them. By the time he decided he would, the sun had gone and the frost had killed the stems. She was too far away for him to ask for another map. So now she was armed with knowing and the understanding of the truth, no longer, she vowed, would she fall victim to the pretty, the beautiful, the facade. She had taken away all his tools; he tried desperately, in secret, to get them back. Yet even so they continued to sit under sycamore trees, his arms wrapped tight around her. Her skin crawled so much she sought to cut herself out. She wanted to escape, he wasn't having it. 

Time had passed, sitting under the trees, and once again the sun was back, and their faces were kissed by the warm watchful breeze. The conversation hadn't halted, but it was stuck in sand. Sinking down into a murky darkness of half-truths, forced laughter, and cold hands. Cold hands that paraded as lovings, they wandered everywhere in the mind, his grasping for something that wasn't there, her blocking the sun that tried to shine. They caught themselves in a trance, with hard stares and rough treatment. Sitting underneath a tree that they wish they had somehow planted because then they could say they created something great, something tall, something good, something close to god; because there was nothing of the sort when they were in each other's arms. There were only rough lips, bruised hips, and lies that were cold, forgone in the spring. They trapped themselves in a never-ending power struggle that cycled with the seasons; always together, watching the wind. Sitting under sycamore trees.