34 days

my friend of 14 years is leaving this Saturday to go to Ashland. it hasn't really sunk in, but it's beginning to. everyone is leaving.

i wish i weren't so repetitive, i feel like i babble on about the same things. things are changing. the leaves are looking sleepier. i have a cold. we have a new couch that makes it harder to leave the house. i'm still in love with everything. does that make the love i give less meaningful, since i give it to so many different things?

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“It’s grown so much,” I say as we both gaze up at the once small oak tree.
“Did you think it wouldn’t?” my friend asks. We stay squinting at the tree for a while, the sun perched high in the late July sky. Summer had only just started, yet it was quickly coming to an end and everything we’ve been avoiding is going to have to be talked about. But for now we just sit in a mutual silence.
When the tree had first been planted 10 years earlier, it couldn’t even begin to take the place of the tree that had just been cut down. It was small and awkward. My family referred to it as the Charlie Brown tree. The sticks, that would hopefully one day become strong branches, would bow under the smallest amount of pressure and only produced a few leaves. Yet here it was, towering over our house years later. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it’d grow, I just didn’t expect it to happen so suddenly.
We both look down at our feet and wiggle our toes. What do you say to someone who knows everything you have to say?