Long listed for the 2023 Urban Tree festival writing competition

There she is. That girl again. She walks towards me now, just as she does every time the sun rises.

She looks just like my favourite. A girl from long ago. The young woman I watched grow under my branches. She napped under me in the summer and cried under me in winter. She whispered to me her deepest secrets. I grew just a little every time she told me she loved me. And sometimes the wind would change with her shallow breath, and I could sense the sadness on each leaf like a thousand little touches.

This other girl, that walks past me every day, looks so like her that I think she may have finally returned to me. I wish to extend my arm, but all I can do is grow slowly closer to her path. I fear one day her path will change and I will lose her forever.

But she stops in front of me today.

She finally stops to face me, looking up from her black screen. She steps forward into the sunlight and for a moment, probably the first in a long time, she is entirely present. Her soul and her body are one. Her arm twitches. Something inside her begs to touch me….

But she returns to the black screen and walks away into the concrete city.

And I’m reminded of my sweet young girl, whose soul fluttered up through my branches and rustled my leaves on her way to heaven.