Branches twist outwards and upwards, leaves sparse and small, knots scattered about. You move from foothold to foothold along the main trunk. You can’t see the ground. Lines of thousands of tree trunks stretch infinitely downwards. You climb upwards. Your feet chip away at the bark, shards of sadness and regret tumble down. Sometimes you think of just letting go, allowing gravity to take you.
The climb is difficult.
Beneath the canopy, it is hard to tell day from night. Some days the sun is a ribbon. Some night the stars pass you by, the moon hangs heavy and large, silhouetting leaves. There used to be birds, but now you don’t hear them; you’ve climbed higher than they can fly.
We don’t know if the climb will end, but we climb together and hope that it doesn’t.
The Mercer Box 