Traitor Tree

Traitor Tree: A Short Story

There is a Gulmohar growing at the fence. Its slender brown trunk though arising from the soft, grassy earth of my compound, has its crimson canopy, like a cloud stranded at dusk, floating low beyond on the other side.

While it wore my rains for years, lived my sunshine and slowly depleted my breast with its roots; now inadvertently sheds its blossoms over a different world, strewing its path in a flaming red.

A little girl ambling past the lawn, twirling a colourful umbrella on her back like a spinning wheel, stops amid the fallen flowers and picks one from her feet. She takes it to her face and feels its petals against her cheeks. Breathes its aura deep before giving in to a complacent smile. She then walks home, the flower aloft on her palm and bliss in her eyes.

I hold onto her smile in my mind and try to feel happy about it. But a strange feeling of loss whips me hard, and the tree I long cared for, now feels like strangulating my existence. I wish to get rid of this feeling, of its everything emanating from deep inside me. It won’t be an easy thing to do, I know. For pulling out a deep-rooted tree, some old feelings, often rips the ground open.

The light and the rain is for everyone to share. This earth is home to all. Perhaps it is the fence that must be pulled down. This feeling of possession in love is what is to be set on fire. There is no way we can let things go by killing them in our heart. It would be making a cemetery within, being haunted by ghosts of old lovers. Instead, let them live. And flourish. Reach out to the sky and dance in the rain. Every once in a while we are going to show up under the tree, I promise, pick up a flower from the ground and smile at each other, reminding us of the better ways to love. From a distance, devoutly and from the soul, without ever being one.

© Sobhan