about spraying them all with something that would get rid of them. I think about taking an axe to the tree. I think about the teeth of saws and of the sawdust the different kinds of wood behind its bark would make.
I wonder if an anonymous letter to the person who owns this house about its dangers to the foundations (though it is nowhere near the foundations) might make him or her consider removing it. Dear Sir, I imagine myself typing, before I shake my head at myself and turn to go and as I do I see the words again on the pavement. The way they’re scrawled, how fast and sloping and green their letters are, reminds me of you when we first knew each other, when we were still not far past adolescence ourselves, still knew we’d alter the world.
A woman comes out of the front door of the house. She clearly wants me to stop laughing outside her house. She shouts at me to go away. She says if I don’t she’ll call the police.
I go home. You’re up in the loft. I worry about you up there. It has no floor and you’re balancing, passionate, on nothing but thin wood. I imagine you seeing the tree through the thick circles of magnifying glass in the binoculars I used to play with when I was a child; inside your head the tree is close-up, silent, there but untouchable, moving, like super-8 film. I know you; you never compromise; there’s no point in calling you down. But you’ve left me some Greek salad on a plate covered by another plate in the kitchen, a fork neatly beside it. I sit on the couch in front of the dug-up laminate and while I’m eating I remember the story about the old couple who are turned into two trees; they let the strangers who knock at the door into their house then find that the gods have visited, and their favour is granted them. I search around in the books until I find the book, but I can’t find the story about the old couple in it. I find the one about the grieving youth who becomes a tree, and the jealous girl who inadvertently causes the death of her rival and is turned into a shrub, and the boy who plays such beautiful music in the open air that the trees and bushes pick their roots up and move closer, making a shady place for him to play, and the god who falls in love with the girl who doesn’t want him, who’s happy without him, and who, when he chases her, is an exceptionally fast runner, being such a good huntress, that she almost outruns him. But since he’s a god and she’s a mortal she can’t, and as soon as she knows her strength is waning and he’s going to catch her up and have her, she prays to her father, the river, to help her. He helps her by turning her into a tree. All of a sudden her feet take root. Her stomach hardens into bark. Her mouth seals up and her face mosses over; her eyes seal shut behind lichen. Her arms above her head grow shoots and hundreds of leaves spring out of each finger.
I fold down the page at this story. I get some work things ready for tomorrow and call you, tell you as usual that I’m off to bed, that if you don’t come now so I can put the lights out and get some sleep I’m going to leave you.
When we’re in bed I hand you the book, open at the story. You read it. You look pleased. You read it again, leaning over me to catch the light. I read my favourite bit over your shoulder, the bit about the shining loveliness of the tree, and the god, powerless, adorning himself with its branches. You fold the page down again, close the book and put it on the bedside cabinet. I switch the light off.
As soon as you think I’m asleep, when I’m breathing regularly to let you believe I am, you get up. After I hear the gentle shutting of the door, I slide myself out of bed and into my clothes and I go downstairs and out the back door too. This first night I wish I’d pulled on a thicker jacket; in future I will know to.
When I get to the house with the tree I see you there in the dark under it. You are lying on your back on the ground. You look
I wonder if an anonymous letter to the person who owns this house about its dangers to the foundations (though it is nowhere near the foundations) might make him or her consider removing it. Dear Sir, I imagine myself typing, before I shake my head at myself and turn to go and as I do I see the words again on the pavement. The way they’re scrawled, how fast and sloping and green their letters are, reminds me of you when we first knew each other, when we were still not far past adolescence ourselves, still knew we’d alter the world.
A woman comes out of the front door of the house. She clearly wants me to stop laughing outside her house. She shouts at me to go away. She says if I don’t she’ll call the police.
I go home. You’re up in the loft. I worry about you up there. It has no floor and you’re balancing, passionate, on nothing but thin wood. I imagine you seeing the tree through the thick circles of magnifying glass in the binoculars I used to play with when I was a child; inside your head the tree is close-up, silent, there but untouchable, moving, like super-8 film. I know you; you never compromise; there’s no point in calling you down. But you’ve left me some Greek salad on a plate covered by another plate in the kitchen, a fork neatly beside it. I sit on the couch in front of the dug-up laminate and while I’m eating I remember the story about the old couple who are turned into two trees; they let the strangers who knock at the door into their house then find that the gods have visited, and their favour is granted them. I search around in the books until I find the book, but I can’t find the story about the old couple in it. I find the one about the grieving youth who becomes a tree, and the jealous girl who inadvertently causes the death of her rival and is turned into a shrub, and the boy who plays such beautiful music in the open air that the trees and bushes pick their roots up and move closer, making a shady place for him to play, and the god who falls in love with the girl who doesn’t want him, who’s happy without him, and who, when he chases her, is an exceptionally fast runner, being such a good huntress, that she almost outruns him. But since he’s a god and she’s a mortal she can’t, and as soon as she knows her strength is waning and he’s going to catch her up and have her, she prays to her father, the river, to help her. He helps her by turning her into a tree. All of a sudden her feet take root. Her stomach hardens into bark. Her mouth seals up and her face mosses over; her eyes seal shut behind lichen. Her arms above her head grow shoots and hundreds of leaves spring out of each finger.
I fold down the page at this story. I get some work things ready for tomorrow and call you, tell you as usual that I’m off to bed, that if you don’t come now so I can put the lights out and get some sleep I’m going to leave you.
When we’re in bed I hand you the book, open at the story. You read it. You look pleased. You read it again, leaning over me to catch the light. I read my favourite bit over your shoulder, the bit about the shining loveliness of the tree, and the god, powerless, adorning himself with its branches. You fold the page down again, close the book and put it on the bedside cabinet. I switch the light off.
As soon as you think I’m asleep, when I’m breathing regularly to let you believe I am, you get up. After I hear the gentle shutting of the door, I slide myself out of bed and into my clothes and I go downstairs and out the back door too. This first night I wish I’d pulled on a thicker jacket; in future I will know to.
When I get to the house with the tree I see you there in the dark under it. You are lying on your back on the ground. You look
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