Regrowth
By Dominic Walker
After my first appointment with the consultant, I retreated straight to my room. I didn't want to believe what I'd heard. It was then, when I looked out the window, that I noticed you standing there in the garden. You were taller than the others. Yet still you seemed quiet and humble.
My skin became pale, and my muscles seemed almost to give way. The more difficult it became to use the stairs, the more time I spent in my room, watching you from the window, watching you change with the seasons. You were green, red, pale, and always there, always close.
In the winter I wondered if you were cold. You looked like a skeleton. But mum said that's not how it worked. And then in spring you grew heavy with green. We moved my bed so I could watch you swing in the wind. Sometimes I saw them prune you and then, in time, I saw how different parts of you grew back. In that way, we were the same. No matter what they did or how many times I went into the machine, it kept growing back.
I wish I could have climbed to the top and seen the neighbourhood the way you did – the moors and birds nesting.
But then everything became overgrown. I didn't see the men on the lawn anymore. It was muddy; old junk piled up. Mum said they were going to cut you down. And so I slept with the curtains open in those final weeks. I didn't care about the streetlamps or the way the sun flooded in at five in the morning.
They started early and didn't take long. The moment I heard the shouting and chainsaws I closed the curtains. I lay in my room, asking my parents to leave me alone. They were worried, but I could just think of you, my only friend, lying there, cold and heavy on the grass.
Once all the noise had stopped, the air grew soft. My eyes didn't work so well anymore. As I strayed into inky dusk, I felt the crack of all trees, and all my limbs.
THE END