Right there, around the corner, wind raves a paper, flipping it in a circular movement. Small rocks tumble along with the flow of that old dusty road. The road’s endless rounds carry the sight and twist it with every corner. Right there, around the next corner, that tree stands still. Surviving every shimmering season, surviving every dry inexistence of rain. Yet, it falls for the brown episode of time that absorbs the green out of every vain.
A dried leaf falls down silently, surrendering and laying down peacefully. Life ends. Another leaf falls, neighboring its precedent. The mother tree can do nothing to save its flurried children. Life cannot get any harder. How can a tear drop out of inanimate? People can cry, shout, yell, and mourn. How can a tree mourn its loss? How can a tree wail the loss of its falling children? But, what do we know? A man knows nothing. Man cannot break into the silence of nature, nor comprehend the agony in stillness. And again, what do we know?
We cry, spill tears, and with those tears, we spill our rage and pain out. What would a tree spill? Is it possible that these leaves are not the children? Is it possible that these leaves are what a tree would shed in a moment of sorrow?
Trembling footsteps, barely heard, barely moving, approach from that other corner. Hesitant and reluctant that young man disturbs the stillness of nature, moves toward the tree. Touches the aging stem, goes around it, looking for something in particular. There is it, a trembled carving of a heart with two letters inside. At the sight of this heart, the young man drops to his knees, puts his hands on the nearly erased heart, and cries. He cries so hard, and so loud that as if the wind blows were in harmony with his screams. Could it be that this tree has witnessed a broken love tragedy? Or could it be that it has witnessed the arrogance of a child who grew up in age and pretended to grow up in value so he never came back for the shade of this old tree? Or could it be that it missed the sweat of a wounded runaway who craved for shelter under her branches? Could this silence be resembling the loss of any of them? What do we know! What do we know!
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