You can trace history through the coming and going of leaves. The tree out front: draped like arms over the roof. Oak or sycamore or hawthorn. Rich in summer, rusting with autumn. Rotting amongst the roots in winter. Fresh again in spring, green and winking, a hand tucked into a back pocket.
Hello love, it’s just me.
They’ve been waiting beneath this tree for years, so it seems, for something to happen or for things to go back to the beginning. So it begins again, the same old circle. Summer: thick sunlight, sliding over skin like sweaty fingers. Sage’s face, eyelashes and reticent freckles and dear old bump in a thrice-broken nose. A familiar path Sorrel runs a finger, up and down, up and down. The cicadas sing all through the night. The ceiling fan whirs and groans and eventually gives up; they sleep spread-eagled on the veranda. Sage’s eyes are closed, smile curling like an afterthought, careless, devastating. Sharp-edged, even now, when the sky is full of stars and sounds of the night, pressed like nails into Sorrel’s palms. Bloody, willing, held out for more.
Sage huffs a laugh. It sounds funny, like hanging upside down: not enough air but mirth to be had regardless. Sorrel presses it into a thumb.
‘What?’
Sage says: ‘Nothin’. Remembering how stupid you were. In primary.’
‘Bit harsh.’
That slivered smile softens. It’s gritty in Sorrel’s mouth.
‘Bit true.’
Leaves rustle, eavesdrop. Dingoes howl a lament for the heart-struck, the star-burnt.
"We were sent to the recycling bins, and there was a red-belly. You threw a—ha! A rock at it. Jesus. So dumb! So dumb.”
Summers when snakes are most livid, and bold, curling around branches, hidden amongst leaves. They drop like a guillotine as you pass beneath. Hawthorn or oak or sycamore. When you’re least expecting it: there in front of you. Break in the road, cul-de-sac at the end of the long-long drive to somewhere better, somewhere new. Turn around, take a step back. Haven’t you ever lived through a summer? You-me, me-you. Autumn: pumpkins appear as promised. Fat and full of seeds.
‘The colour orange always reminds me of you.’ Sage is thoughtful. ‘Like, if you press leaves between pages or under the carpet you can save their colour, and if you leave them, then—’
Ribs rise and fall. Sorrel’s fingers itch to sink between them, to know them, their shape and weight and sorrow. Creaky like a ship’s hull, curved like crooked fingers. See how gentle love can be, how reverent. Oh sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart. You are so gratefully insane. To be known by you is such a graceful annihilation, and it could always be worse. It can always, always be worse.
‘You’re leaving,’ says Sorrel. ‘Aren’t you.’
The leaves dribble, spent. Enough now, enough. The space beneath a tongue where you can curl up; settle, sleep, stay. Years fingertips have been spent; learning, knowing, remembering. Bumps in noses and chips in nails and grazes on elbows and, and, and—
Sage’s head falls sideways. Eyes like rare harvest moons, swollen, apologetic. Winter: A thousand-piece puzzle, missing three sky bits. Brown earth, bare branches, knuckles made for bruising, to be bruised in return. That’s how it works, right? Trudging down the steps in house-high boots, lips pressed, ears cold. Hands clutching elbows. Sage’s nose breaks for a fourth time so easily, so willingly. You, me–me, you.
Under fingertips, cartilage slides gently against cartilage. Blood, smooth and sticky. Sage sniffs, wipes a sleeve across nose and mouth. It comes away red. ‘Sorry, love.’ The tree bears witness, eyebrow raised, well-I-told-you-so. Sycamore or hawthorn or oak. Whatever. Doesn’t it ever get tired of growing leaves, again and again, year after year. Year after year after year— Spring: and leaves grow back and fingers lie stagnant.
A note on the piece;
In omitting pronouns, it was my intention for the characters to be ephemeral extensions of nature. Things grow and die and grow anew. This, to me, reflects the loss felt when a loved one leaves. Something shared between you ends; you grow in different directions. But after winter, there is spring. There will always, always be another spring.
-Katherine e. Nicholson
Katherine is a neuroscience and literature student who misses home very much. She is a lover of stories and astrocytes, and big green fields.
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