(12) Josh Dale: Trees Scarred With Love
I drive her to the trail with tree carvings. It is a special place for a lot of people, and I hope it will be for us, too.
We trudge through some mud and our sneakers bury themselves. The smell of wet leaves is exchanged with the roasted coffee from the morning. Many notched tree roots roll under our dirty soles. I kick some mud off my Nike’s and it gets on an uprooted tree. Its roots skyward and bark chipping away with every scrape. It feels like a massage on my weary tendons. Like the day we ran a 5k. She beat me.
We ascend and wind up the hill that overlooks the creek, raised high and sloshing with beige. There’s a tree wedged into another like a beam and fulcrum. She sits on the one side and I reach high to slam the other end down. Her enthralled gasps fly up with her, nearly ten feet up and my muscles tense. Yet, she comes back down to earth with the grace of an angel. Like the day we went rock climbing with my friends. My heart throbs.
I made a playlist last night. It is twelve songs for every month of the year we’ve been together, starting with the most recent month all the way back to our first date. We listen to it with one Airpod, leaving the other ear to take in the snaps and crackles and chirps of birds. It was an hour long. I timed the trial a week before on my own for 48 minutes. It was bound to work. It had to work.
I know the clearing is in sight when we tiptoe over the tiny stream. The 11th song ends and the final one begins, Hall & Oates’s “Maneater”. I jog ahead, feeling the padded earth that’s been airdried by the wind. Our hoodies do little to keep the yowling wind. Goosebumps are forming. I bet she’s smiling. This song played in the restaurant when we had our first kiss.
There’re four trees scarred by immortalized love that overlooks a cliff. Hawks can be seen diving into the woods below. But not today. She gazes at the trunks, awed by the designs and dates. I pull the pocketknife from my backpack. It’s cold, dead steel feels even deader in my hand. My eyes find a blank canvas for my carving of Z&A. I capture us both in a jagged heart forever. She kisses me and follows up with a swig of water.
I stand with my back to her and gaze at the wilderness, the abyss. Where the green meets gray and everything between. I time the seconds of the final chorus and dig into my pocket. I wait for the song to end, a few moments of silence. The blood aches as it hits my fingertips. I feel the velvet in my khakis pants and wrap my love around it. I close my eyes and ask her what is better, love, or eternity. She stands there, the wind blowing from the trees. Her auburn hair flies forward masking her answer. I inhale some of nature, some of her. I take her hand and take a step.
Josh Dale is a graduate student, publisher, and subservient vassal to his Siamese cat. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Breadcrumbs Mag, Maudlin House, The Daily Drunk, and a book, Duality Lies Beneath (Thirty West Publishing, 2016). He blogs occasionally at joshdale.co and posts average-ish content on IG & Twitter @jdalewrites. He lives in Pennsylvania.