Senescence

I have loved you since we were buds.

Since the light and rain gave us everything we could ever need. You were just an idea; the potential of love.

Then I watched you transform. No longer a sapling but a blooming, rich-green growth, sprawling from our branch and reaching up to the sun, snacking on its light and digesting the air.

I loved you through the seasons:

Wet and verdant and new, before turning into something fully realized, filling the limbs and catching the rain on your own.

I loved you when you turned red with fluttering anger, as life and weather rolled over us. The wind blew through you and the children reached for you with tiny hands. I loved you when the puddles gathered beneath us, our stems holding on for dear life, looking to one another when the wind settled and lining ourselves against the other when a gust pushed on.

I loved you as you dried, becoming shriveled and wrinkled, the senescence of the fall becoming apparent in the winter. You still moved with the wind, albeit much louder now, a crinkle and crack with each blow, crunching against each other. The children no longer reached, but instead watched your every move from the frosted glass windows. Your color changed then, too. Deep, decaying - your veins harder to find.

I'm sorry to say it took until the tail-end of this life cycle to realize what my love meant: how even though the love belonged to me, I had so ardently given it all to you.

I didn't know if my love wanted you to stay, allowing me to crisp and drop first. Perhaps it was more chivalrous to allow you to go first, decomposing beneath the children's feet as they carried on with their lives.

Katie Lilljedahl