Yesterday, while riding the bus on my way to work, I had seen a sign for a lost lovebird stapled to a tree. Thinking it would make for an interesting photo, and perhaps an interesting post, I returned to the scene in search of the sign. When I arrived at the tree, the sign for the missing lovebird was missing, nowhere to be found.
Thinking I was mistaken, and had wandered to the wrong block, I continued walking around the area inspecting all the posts. I looked at so many logs I became an honorary proctologist. But after having exhausted the perimeter, I realized the sign must've either been taken down or had blown away. How often love manages to escape on the wind; with wings or in great wet gusts.
Having lost the bird, I was able to shift my focus to the trees. The trees become veritable magnets for pain; mangled masses of metal adorn their bodies like piercings teeming with tetanus. Rusted old nails and tacks crawl and swarm across the bark like colonies of ossified insects. Staples like tombstones mark the resting place of long forgotten garage sales, lost cats & dogs, missing children, and apartments no longer for rent. Every piece of metal is a memory left on the bark. In the forests of my mind, the trees too are covered thusly. A nail for each great love and every best friend, all the things yearned for but never had; a staple for every petty fight, every baseless fear, all the failures; thick tacks for insecurities, the death of loved ones, time poorly spent.
The experiences of our past shape the topography of the trees - in our minds and on our corners - they're persistent advertisements, even when the signs are taken down. Especially, when blown away.
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