That World is Now

My oldest friend,

so old and almost forgotten, golden memories like her gleaming leaves disconnecting, dying, decaying in the brown of the brush below. 

Gone forever, though not lost or abandoned beneath the chaos of growing up,

but cut down. 

My oldest friend

once stood above me, I in her shadow, and she in my mind:

Anything I could imagine.

A billowing train station, a beginning 

to each adventure,

to each smile and laugh,

leaves becoming tickets into my fantasies: 

The woods she towered in front of,

like a gateway, 

but not a gateway

into a world only I knew. 

And then she fell, 

and I forgot, 

and I moved on,

And I began to wander

far and wide to find someone like her.

There are plenty of trees you know. 

But there was something in the way 

her bark twisted up and roots threaded down,

seemed to never end,

and strike the skies and soils,

The connecting of two worlds, with I the in-between. 

11 years ago, 

when I was merely but a sprout in the ground, 

looking up, 

at what I may someday become.