The Last Summer

She spent all her time with him, shared all her secrets, and played with him until she was no longer capable of playing.

I watched her as she approached, tears running down her face. There were scars all over her exposed skin. They were like the ones that covered me, although hers were self inflicted, and mine were forced onto me by others. She had a bag on one arm and I wanted to know its contents, if only she’d show me.

            I kept my arms inviting as they always were and she came over and leaned against me, her face brushing against my rough surface. I knew her, she came often and she used to play on this hill when she was a little girl. Running and chasing her friends and then rolling to the bottom only to climb back up. They used to climb all over me, play with me even though I couldn’t play back. They’d attached a swing to one of my many arms for a few summers, and even though it hurt to support them I was glad. I liked to play with the children. It made me feel like I belonged.

            Now as she grew older she didn’t play anymore. She would lean against me with her journal and I could see the things she wrote. She wrote about those that hurt her, the ones that treated her like she wasn’t human. She wrote about her father who left her family behind for someone else. She wrote about the girls at school that abused her, isolated her, left her alone to cry in silence. She wrote about her friends that didn’t know that her smile was fake and that would never reach out to help.

            She hid her scars from all of them, but she always let me see them. It didn’t matter how hard she tried to hide them from others, when she came to see me she left them exposed. I was the only one that knew how many she had, that knew how much she hated herself. I she shouldn’t have to hate who she was. I loved her, she was perfect. Her dark hair was almost the color of my skin, her eyes bright like my leaves. There used to be a light in them, but it had faded over the last two years. I missed it greatly.

            She held her journal against her now, her pen clutched in one hand. I always liked her pen, it was one of the old one’s the kind you needed to dip in ink to use. It suited her, an old soul lost in a world far too new. She was writing on the last page, the only one left in the little book. It was a letter, I could see that it was addressed to anyone that wanted to read it. But her slim shoulders blocked my view of the rest of the words.

            When she closed pages she startled me and I watched as she placed it on the ground, tucked into a hollow at the bottom of my body. She always hid things there that she didn’t want others to find. I was confused, why would she write a letter no one was going to find? But the thought went out of my head when she started to climb up my arms. She hadn’t climbed me in years, had stopped when she got older and struggled to lift her body up high enough.

            She went up to one of the highest branches still thick enough to support her. She dug through that bag of hers and in it was rope. I couldn’t help but feel joy, the last time rope hung from me it contained a swing. She was going to swing from me again. The rope was tied around my arm tightly, and it hurt just like back then but he could live with it. The joy outweighed the pain every time.

            I couldn’t quite see her perfectly from where she was perched, my leaves blocking my view. But that didn’t matter, I knew what she was doing. Then she jumped off my arm and I felt a rough tug, almost snapping my arm off. But I was flexible enough to support it. She fell into my view and the confusion set in again. The rope was tied around her neck just as tightly as it was on my arm. She hung there limply, swaying back and forth and I felt happy for a moment, seeing her playing, but then, she wasn’t breathing anymore.

My little girl, the little girl that meant the world to me when she laughed and played, wasn’t breathing. I panicked, wanted to help her, to save her, but there was nothing I could do. She hung there alone, swinging from my arm like a limp doll and I couldn’t save her. No matter how much I had consoled her in the past, I hadn’t been able to save her the one time she needed me to.

That was the last summer my buds bore leaves. The last summer the little apple blossoms covered my smaller arms. The last summer anyone played with me. And the last summer I felt any joy.

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[Maggie]

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