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Have you ever felt this overwhelming feeling of nostalgia that comes when you suddenly, unintentionally, come across some insignificant and seemingly meaningless thing - a mug, a street, a single flower -, something that brings forth memories of a home you can't return to, or perhaps one you never even got to know?
They say there's a word for that (hiraeth) , for a lost homeland you've been swiftly, unpredictably, and unexpectedly uprooted from.
I went to the park earlier this morning. I don't know why, my feet simply decided to drag me there on their own.
Have you ever heard of the way plants call to one another through their roots? Some release chemicals into the soil to prevent their neighbors from growing, others become shy and stifle their growth by closing themselves off from others. I wonder if it's something shared by all living beings - plants and animals, curses and humans - to prey upon others or let themselves be preyed upon. I wonder which one is best.
As I walk amongst the carefully groomed flowerbeds (the way I've seen children get groomed by adults), I suddenly notice an old cherry tree. Its flowers are the lightest of pinks, and the bark is flush with life, a reddish tint in a sea of gray trunks and ashen leaves. I sit down and watch as petals are carried away by the breeze. It's the beginning of April after all, and even now I see children of all ages walking to school, clad in their monotone uniforms, carrying the heavy weight of their backpacks on their shoulders.
I reminisce of a time when I was one of them. I'd never been too dependent on my teachers, and I had trouble engaging with most of my peers, if only by virtue of them being incapable of understanding my plight and - in hindsight - me being unable to comprehend their own.
It was lonely, very much so, though I didn't realize it at the time. Looking back on it, it makes me laugh, something sharp and bitter, that I thought myself so mature, so far above the rest of them for the simple fact that they'd planted roots where I refused to.
I was just scared. In fact, I spent most of my life scared, afraid of being left alone, behind, or some other variation of what is essentially the same thing - a primordial fear living within all people, perhaps moreso those like me, accustomed to dealing with the darkest and most repulsive aspects of the human condition.
I'm not scared anymore. What is there to be scared of, when there is nothing to be scared for in the first place?
I close my eyes. My lashes fall petal-soft on the apple of my cheeks. There's a tightness in my chest when I breathe in slowly, the ruffle of a summer canopy growing in my lungs and flourishing in the narrow cracks of my bronchi, frail and unfathomably resistant.
I think back on my childhood. I grew up wild, untamed, untouched. Feral and fearsome and fearless in my entirety, less of a thorny rose and more poisonous ivy, undoubtedly strong and equally as vicious, clawing my path upwards without pause.
I remember the first time I was truly left alone. It was winter, and all the more fitting for it. Did you know the reason trees shed their leaves during the first and last season of the year is to keep their coveted resources to themselves so they may survive? It only stands to reason that we should do the same with the ones closest to us, whether it's a bond forged by sap or by blood.
I do not regret it, not as much as I would have if I had never encountered him. He was the soil from which my roots sapped the life away, the sun and the rain that brightened my days and quenched my searing thirst.
They say that talking to plants promotes their growth, that insulting them makes them shrivel up and wither. It's a good thing I'm not a flower then, since I blossomed under his (sometimes painfully absent) attention.
I can't quite pinpoint when it started. I just recall one day back in my youth when I looked at him as I usually did, only to become unable to turn away, rooted in my spot as I was, a sunflower looking for a star. It was sunset, and he was the only source of light.
Some part of me knew it was unhealthy, nothing more than a pesky weed that I had to get rid of - immediately . But how could it be so, when its stem shone such a brilliant green and its flowers opened so coyly, so beautifully?
I tended to it. I gave it tender attention, away from the eyes of others, in the privacy of my own room which had long since become my secret greenhouse.
I wish I'd been able to do the same for him. Now that I do regret. Painfully so.
It wasn't always easy, caring for a weed, much less in secret. Sometimes I'd cut my fingers on razor sharp leaves. Others I'd feel the vines twist around my heart, right, very tight, and my bloodflow would slow down to that of sap and my head would feel light and clouded and (what should have been) worryingly empty. At some point the calluses felt like tree bark on my fingertips. I never wore gloves.
In my efforts to keep my gardening activities secret, for the risk of them being taken away from me, I myself became prickly. Dismissive, in a way. I was at my best when I nurtured my weed, at my worst when I hid it away.
With time it grew too big for me to keep it cloistered in my room. Gardeners will say this is the time to transplant a sapling to a bigger pot, mayhaps even the garden, but I've never been much fond of doctors and I hated the idea of my weed being extirpated from me, and so I refused.
It's very demanding to take care of such a big weed, not because it needs it - it's hardy enough to survive unchecked - but because you've pledged yourself to it, even when you suddenly need to take a breath after climbing up a set of stairs, or when you get too tired to walk, so you simply sit down in the shade and try to regain you strength. There comes a point when it's too cumbersome to move, when your joints feel wooden and stiff, like a door that's gone too long without oiling. One morning you see grooves appear right underneath your eyes, ridges right in the middle of your brow, and you need to turn to the sun and the rain because you're dry and parched and all the things you wouldn't be if you didn't give them away to the weed you can't help but care for.
It doesn't help when you look at him. There's not enough of him to satisfy your voracious needs so you hunger and thirst and wilt.
But in those brief, fleeting moments when he looks back, you bloom so handsomely it makes all the pain worth it.
However, that's not the reason I sit beneath this tree today, watching an ephemeral pink canopy ripple above my head.
I could have lived while tending to the weed on my own. I could not survive without sunshine and rain.
I was taken away suddenly. Abducted, uprooted and thrown into a sea of decay. There was no light, no soil to plant my roots in. An ocean of salt, and no source of fresh water in sight. Trapped in a diminutive space with no way out. Still, it was fine. Because I knew the moment I gained my freedom there would be sun, there would be rain, and I could tend to my weed hidden away from prying eyes.
A long time passed before I was freed, and things had changed so drastically. I floundered, searching for him.
I demanded they bring me to him. They took me to a field covered in flowers. I notice a sapling growing at the centre of it. The sky is overcast yet there's not a single drop. I saw then that just as I'd needed him, so too did the fields under which he now laid.
I should have gotten rid of my weed then, it wouldn't live through the draught. I didn't.
I was hurt, sap rushed to my wounds desperately trying to seal them shut. I bled. I still do to this day.
The years passed. The sapling became a beautiful cherry tree, and each spring I'd sit in its shade and watch as people planted their own trees around it. I talked to it.
Sometimes I thought it was unbecoming. I entertained the idea that I was killing it slowly (again) the way weeds prey upon their neighbours. But I've always been selfish, and still I came - and I come - to sit in the cherry tree's shade.
I don't think I can get up now. I'm too tired, too stiff and too wooden.
It hurts. Very much. And yet I can't help but feel relieved that I'm finally following the gardeners' advice. My weed is too big, and I am too old to hide away in my greenhouse, trapped in a miserable pot. I won't be alone, not when he's here, along with all the others I've had to bury throughout the years.
It makes me happy to think that from this moment on I'll always be here to protect the cherry tree the way I could never do for him.
There is a great cherry tree said to ward away evil spirits. It blooms on the seventh day of the fourth month, as if to honor the old man that used to visit him at the start of every school year. There is a shimenawa tied around its massive trunk, and although they're often mistaken for weeds, there's a helianthus ring guarding the tree from unsuspecting outsiders. Visitors are always surprised to note that the sunflowers never seem to look towards the sun, preferring instead to gaze upon the elder cherry tree. They never look away from it again.