I No Longer Pass by the Tree

It struck me one day, one quiet day. It appeared on the right side of the path, though I cannot be certain whether it had always been there. I have only been alive for twenty-two years, and it looked as though it had been standing there since the very first day of life itself. It was apparently lifeless, or at least, that is what others thought. Its roots were exposed in such a way that they resembled a face. Not a human one, though. Something broader. Something that did not quite require expression in order to be understood.

I walked this path every day, past the tree, thinking that perhaps it would speak to me. I began adjusting my pace long before I reached it, so that I arrived already consumed by the thought of it. It is difficult to explain. There was no fear in it, only admiration. Respect, perhaps. Or anticipation, the anticipation of getting to know it better, maybe even forming a kind of friendship.

At night, the path persisted. Not as a memory, and not entirely as a dream either. I did not choose to return to it, and yet I would find myself there, as if it had continued without me, though I could never remember how it had started.

I cannot say when it happened, or how long it had been happening before I noticed, but eventually I sensed a discrepancy. A surreal image I first dismissed as illusion, or worse, hallucination. In that state, the body of the tree became less relevant. Less important. The face, however, remained, but it was no longer the same. The roots had begun to take on another form. A face I recognised. A face I have been forced to see in every reflection since I was born. They resembled the head of a dead cow, as if someone had brutally slaughtered it, feasted on the flesh, and discarded what remained. And yet nature, in its terrible tenderness, had adopted it. Mother Nature had taken that discarded violence and folded it into herself, giving it a new shape, a new purpose, a new identity.

I liked that.

I liked it more than I should have.

The tree became something else to me. Not entirely a tree anymore, but something that resembled a friend. Someone, or something, I could return to. Do not ask me what we spoke about, because I do not remember speaking at all. And yet, somehow, I came to know things about myself that I had never known before. Things I had not admitted. Things I had not survived enough to name. But this specific night, there was more to it. It said something to me. Something sinister. Something unbelievable. Something about mankind that only the stars could possibly witness. The unexplainable figure told me its pain, its story, and I mistook it for my own. There were details in the stories that I did not recognise as mine, and yet I was certain I had lived them. I was certain they belonged to me. There are some kinds of understanding that do not belong to language.

That night, the tree looked more familiar than ever before. But I was no longer looking at the tree. I was looking for the cow’s head. I searched for it desperately, but it seemed to be erasing itself. I waited. I thought it would return to its old shape. And I was sad, not suddenly but quietly, as though the recognition had always been there, because it had become the only presence I could name as a friend. I tried to move closer, to reach the roots, but I failed, miserably, helplessly.

Then I felt it. And I felt as though someone was butchering me. Not metaphorically. I felt my soul being separated from my body, and it hurt more than when my limbs were torn away, more than when they fed on my flesh. The roots and the tree were growing inside me. Where my limbs had once been, there were branches. Where my body once ended, it gave way to bark.

And still, I searched for the cow’s head. But I could not find it. Only then did I realise why.

A cow stood before me, whole, alive, free, grazing peacefully on the grass. The only difference was this: it was out there, standing exactly where I had been watching it from. Then it struck me. The body had not disappeared. It had merely been replaced.

Now the cow comes to visit me every day. And the shape of the roots has changed again. They have a strange, sorrowful face, and some say it looks like mine. I no longer pass by the tree.