Our Tree of Life

BY: Eden Marks

Dedication: To Grammy, thank you for teaching me to be creative.

Story:

There are so many different stages to our lives.
It’s like flowing down a tree until we’re at the roots.

We all start as sprouts,
We grow into leaves,
Then we mature to twigs,
And soon, we’re as big as branches.
Someday we’ll be at the trunk,
And by the time our life ends,
We’ve made it to the roots.

The flowers of the trees are different, though.
We’re never in the flower stage.
I don’t know what the flower stage is.

You used to give me flowers from your tree.
Only the ones that fell off,
Because you said you could never hurt a tree.

I thought you were just making things up,
A tree can’t really feel anything,
But I understand now.

You always thought a tree was like a little family.

The sprouts of our tree,
Remind me of children before they were born.

A whole life ahead of them,
That they’ll grow through,
And learn about.

The sprouts are like a mystery.
We don’t know what could grow.
Another branch?
A flower?
Maybe just some more leaves.

You used to smile as we passed the flowering trees.
You used to point out the bright red colored flowers.
As if they were hard to miss,
But I always looked where you pointed.

The flowers smelled like a perfume you used to wear.
I think that’s why you liked them so much.

Every time we passed one of these flowers,
You would smile almost as sweetly as they smelled.
No one could ever replicate your smile.

Since you passed,
All I’ve wanted was to see that smile again.

The leaves of our tree,
Have so many things to look forward to.
They’re the kids of our tree,
Just finding out where they belong.

The leaves always reminded me of little children.
They’re interested in everything,
But nothing can captivate them for a long time.

The leaves still depend on the branches for support,
Just as children depend on their parents.

Sometimes, as I would walk past these trees in the park,
The leaves would fall off the branches,
And they always seemed to follow me,
In a sort of poetic way.

The way the wind used to blow through the trees,
Always gave me the smell of fresh air.
But the air always smelled a little sweeter with you.

The twigs of our tree are all still growing.
We are easily broken,
And impossible to control.
Kids run past us,
Swing and crack our patience.

The twigs remind me of teenagers,
Who strive to be independent.

We believe we can do everything by ourselves,
And we try to,
But oftentimes we still have to rely on our parents.

The branches of our tree know who they are.
They carry the weight of their twigs and leaves,
And they have a strong relationship with our trunk.

The branches remind me of young adults.
They have lived long enough to know themselves,
But never long enough to stop learning.

These branches carry twigs and leaves,
Just like these adults have children and teens.

The upper part of the trunk is strong and supportive.
They’ve grown branches, twigs, and millions of leaves.

The people in the upper trunk have lived a full life.
They still work,
And get out of bed in the morning,
But they don’t have to anymore.

As much as they try to stay young,
The people in the height of our trunk continue their descent.

They will spend the rest of their life in the lower trunk.
It is the sturdiest of us all,
They’ve lived a full life as they have gone through our tree.

The people in the lower trunk stage are less aware.
It’s the time of life when other people have to help you.

You’ve lived your life to the fullest,
And as much as I wish you never made it to the roots,
That’s where you are now.

The roots of our tree are what keep us strong.
The roots have lived a long life,
But now they are in the ground,
No longer visible.

The roots remind me of people who aren’t here anymore.
People who have enjoyed the life they lived,
And who have now descended to the ground,
Their final resting place.

The roots remind me of people who help,
People who will support you no matter what.
They sit there and watch others who are in pain,
They watch like they know what others are going through,
And they always know what to say.
The roots remind me of you.

You’ve gone all the way through our tree now.
You grew three kids,
From little leaves until they reached our trunk.

They are still making their way down the tree,
But you’re in the roots now.

I think I finally understand what you meant,
When you said that the tree had feelings.
I think I finally understand why you never pulled off a flower.

If a tree is a family,
Taking off something as small as a flower,
Could have been ripping the family apart.

When I was little,
I would grab at the leaves,
But you never let me have them.

You would smile and say you’ll buy me a flower,
But not those,
“Those are still alive.”

We would walk away,
I would grin,
Knowing I would get a prettier flower later that day.

Now I know there are no prettier flowers than those.

You would always take an extra glance at the flowers.
I thought it was just because they were pretty,
But any flower is pretty to a kid.

A week later,
We would pass a kid smelling the flower you looked at,
And seeing him not rip off the flower made you smile a little more.

The poets write about that feeling,
Of hidden joy,
Joy that came from the little things.
The things only you noticed.

But the poets write about much more than the trees with the little leaves.

The poets write about grief as something undescribable.
But it’s easy to describe.
It’s just empty.

There are shows about grief.
About losing someone you were close with,
To feel the worst,
But to always get better.

The painters paint it as dark blue or black,
Like it’s something impossible.

How can you paint something not real?

If I were a painter,
I would paint those bright red flowers,
I would paint the young boy smelling them,
And I would paint that smile you always had on when you saw those flowers.

I smelled that sweet, flowery scent at your funeral.
It must have been something else,
But it made me cry a little extra for you,
Because I knew it would never smell the same again.

I may not smell the flowery scent again,
But if I do,
It won’t be the same.

It’ll be more of a memory,
Something to look back and reminisce on.

You never knew I recognized the flowery scent in your perfume,
But I noticed.

I noticed every time we passed those flowers.
I noticed you looked a little more confident wearing that perfume,
Only because you liked it more.

That’s something the poets can’t write about.
I can’t explain what it felt like to smell those flowers again at your funeral.

I wouldn’t say it was bad.
I couldn’t say it was bad.

It made me miss you more, of course,
But it was like you were watching us.

It was like you knew I needed something,
You let a tree lose a flower,
So I could smell it.

I’ve thought about you every day since then,
Every tree I pass,
Every glowing red flower.

I think I finally know what the flower stage is.
We never pass through the flower stage,
Because the flowers aren’t a stage like the rest.

The flowers are a personality.

Not everyone is a flower,
Some people are the thorns,
The fruit,
Or just the leaves of the trees.

I think everyone is something.

A thorn would be protective.
Tough on the outside,
But always reasonable.

The fruit would be sweet,
Just like the flower.
But maybe the fruit is sour too.
Maybe the fruit is sour when it’s not ready to be picked,
To leave its tree.
And maybe it’s sweet when it knows it’s ready to leave,
To conquer the world on its own.

The leaves?
They follow.
They like to stay with friends and family.
They can’t leave home,
But that’s okay,
Because they have their whole family with them.

But what about moss?
Is the moss another personality?

I think the moss is a distraction.
It’s there to make life a little more challenging.

I think the moss is the things you work on for a long time,
That end up not working at all.

The moss reminds me of the friends we thought would be here for us forever,
But ended up only being here for a little while.

I think the moss wasn’t bad when it was there,
It looks a little pretty on the trees,
But as it’s there,
Posing for pictures,
It’s slowly and carefully eating at the insides of the tree.

When you pull the moss off,
The tree has temporary relief.
It’s finally free of the moss’s burden.

But the relief can’t last forever.
Soon, the tree will realize what the moss did.

The moss ate not only at the tree’s structure,
But also its confidence.

The tree doesn’t know who to trust anymore.
It thought the moss would never do something like this,
But just like the thorn,
The moss lied.

The thorn is a lot different than the other personalities.
The thorn is much like the moss.

The flower and fruit seemed like siblings,
The leaf is the annoying little brother,
That everyone in the family adores.
But the thorn,
The thorn was the kid who never listened.
The rule breaker who would hurt people just to see them cry.

There was no doubt that you were the flower,
You were as sweet as they smelled.
You were caring and always had a smile on,
No matter what,
Because you knew smiling helped us.

I think I’m the fruit,
I can be just as sweet as the flowers,
Someone others can talk to and trust,
Or just as sour as a thorn’s cut.

But how does someone become a flower?
What if I act like a thorn, a leaf, or some fruit?

Why do people act differently?

Is it because of the weather?
The season?
Or just their personality?

I think the weather and the season affect someone’s personality.

In the spring,
People act like flowers blooming.
People see a time to start new,
To start fresh, sweetly, like you.

The flowers sprouted as always,
And they could see that their life would never disappoint.
The flowers grow older,
But they start to get tugged at,
And the best ones would get picked off.

You never used to admit it,
But it killed you to see people not treat the flowers right.

From overwatering,
To leaving them out in the sun.

You had plants too.
They stayed outside,
But you always made sure they were healthy.

In the spring,
The weather is clear.
It doesn’t rain much,
Only to feed the flowers.

I think that’s why you never said anything.
You always trusted that the flowers would be okay.
You knew something would save them.
Something always did.

I never understood how the flowers were always perfect.
No one could take care of them,
There were too many,
But they never looked starved of anything.

Now that you’re gone,
I know the flowers will be okay.
I knew they would be okay the second I found out.

You’ll watch over them,
Just like you watch over us.

In the spring,
It’s warm outside.
Not uncomfortable,
Just sweet.
Like the flowers themselves.

In the summer,
The fruit starts to show.
The ongoing sweetness from the spring is fading away,
And shades of sour are coming out.

In the summer,
The weather is rainy.
It pours and pours,
Until you’re begging for a drought,
But it’s perfect for the fruits.

In the summer,
People are relaxed,
They finally get a break from the stress of spring.
But soon people turn sour with boredom.
The sweetness is gone by August,
So now we’re ready for fall.

In the fall,
The green fades from the leaves.
They turn all shades of orange,
Pinks, yellows, and reds.

Red.

You used to love red.
Those bright red flowers.

Seeing the red leaves in the fall,
Always replaced your sadness from summer.

The sadness that only seemed to appear when the flowers blew away.

Now, the leaves look like they were never green.

You were born in the summer,
But fall was always your favorite.

In the fall,
You don’t feel bad when the leaves blow off their trees.
You know only the bravest go,
And they only go when they’re ready.

In the fall,
The air turns from hot,
To warm,
To cold.

In the fall,
It rains.
The rain feels like the Earth is crying.

The Earth is tired of holding it all in.
That’s when we get hurricanes.

Sometimes, I wonder if you held it all in.
I wonder if you ever wish you could cry as much as the Earth does.

I wonder why you never have.

After fall comes winter.
Winter is when the trees cry.

The trees are bare,
The leaves, fruit, and flowers are gone.

The stems and branches,
The trunk and roots,
All miss them.

In the winter,
People act differently.
People are cold.

Not only in their temperature,
But their attitude as well.

You used to say winter was your least favorite season,
And I never understood why.

I do now.

Your passing has made me realize a lot,
But I would do anything to go back before I knew.

The people in the winter act rudely toward each other.
Or, they don’t act like anything at all.

That’s what they did to me.

They stopped talking.
They froze,
Just like the thorns.

The thorns were still there,
But they act differently in their season.

The thorns like the cold.
It’s the only season they have the whole tree to themselves.

They’re selfish.

But the people I knew were fine,
I never thought they were a thorn.
I always associated them with fruit,
But a fruit that was sour more than it was sweet.
The summer was when they were at their best,
The summer was when I didn’t talk to them.

I see it now, though.

I always thought that when I talked to them,
It was the wrong time.
That was why they were sour.

But it’s not.

The winter’s cold bites at you,
Just like the thorns do.

I thought the thorns only hurt on the outside,
I thought they could be reasonable.

But I got to the inside of them,
And they were never reasonable.

I changed my mind on thorns.
I think all the thorns hurt.

I think if a person who is a thorn is sweet,
They’re a fruit,
No matter how sour they seem.

I said I thought I was a fruit,
Because I could be as sweet as a flower,
Or as sour as a thorn.

But I take it back, now.
If anyone can be as sour as a thorn,
They are a thorn,
Regardless of how sweet they might be on the outside,
Because the thorns like to fake their sweetness during the other seasons.

Some fruits are only sweet for a short time,
But the fruit does eventually become sweet.

That’s the thing about the people I once knew.
They were never sweet,
I just couldn’t understand.

You understood, though.

You always knew.

You knew when the fall was over,
You knew when the flowers would bloom.
You knew when the winter would finally end,
You knew about the thorn’s torture,
But you knew the thorns would eventually leave us.

And some day soon,
The thorns from winter wither away,
And spring comes again.

Sweet spring,
Spring with new fruit growing.
Spring with bright green leaves.
Spring with flowers blooming.

Spring with your flowers blooming.

My friends and I walk past your flowers now.
They smile and say they smell good,
But they’ll never know what those flowers mean to me.

The flowers remind me of you.

I can’t see you anymore,
So the flowers are the closest thing I have.

You’re in the roots now,
So you’ve lived through all the seasons.
The sweet smell of spring,
The subtle sour of summer,
The red leaves that always brought peace in the fall,
And the sharp cold of the winter.

In the winter it snows,
It rains in the fall,
It’s hot in the summer,
And the weather in the spring is different then them all.

It rains in some places,
But it snows in others.
It’s hot down south,
But it’s still the thorn’s season in the north.

The cold is rude,
It brings snow and hail,
Like a blanket to cover the sharp thorn’s personality.

The snow is like a disguise,
So no one can really see the sting of the thorn.

The rain from the fall are the tears.
They make the sky dark and cloudy,
But they also bring life for the flower’s next years,

The summer’s heat is from the sun’s bright light.
The sun is like a radiation of happiness,
But of course, nothing can just be good.
The sun’s heat gets on people’s nerves,
It makes people say things they don’t mean.

But spring always comes,
And it brings those sweet flowers back.

It’s sad to think this,
But you won’t ever see your flowers again.

I wish you were still here,
I wish that you were still in our trunk,
But you’re in your root stage now.

Everyday,
We feel your support coming from underneath us.

We miss you,
But I know you’re still with us.

That’s how trees grow.

The roots power the life we live.

The life I wish I could live,
With you.