Reaching

There was a tree across the street, the greenest tree that you ever did see. And I say something about the green because it was the only green that I think existed in that grey, drab city.

Except drab might not be exactly the right word because it certainly wasn’t a boring place to live your life. The buildings rose around all the streets, ten stories, twenty, thirty more, and they were these massive structures of steel and glass walls that sometimes reflected the sky and caught the light and they stopped being grey and were suddenly blue or orange or that sunrise pink and, yeah, they looked really pretty in those moments. There was always something to do in those buildings. Work or eat or see a game or visit a friend, there was always another thing to do that would make you rise up one building and down another or rush out briefly onto the streets. But you would pass through the streets as quickly as possible and then you’d go back up and up. When you got to the top of one of the rises and the world opened up all around you, all sky and cloud and steel-grey spires, it was a marvelous sight to see. But it was empty, empty, and you were never quite sure that you weren’t going to just fall off and fall, fall, fall, all the way to the distant ground.

But then you’d head back towards the ground and the world changed a great deal. The lower buildings and the floors crowded around and blocked out that empty, empty sky and hovered around the streets. Those squatting, shadowy trolls were bedecked year-round with lights and lights and neon showers and flashing signage that gave off a roar of light so loud that it made your nose itch and set your tongue on fire. And that was at night, too, when the sky wasn’t reflecting on the steel and glass from above to make it blue but was actually being beat back by whatever light was on inside the very same walls because sometimes that light would be all colorful like the ones floating above the road but usually they were all just that strange fluorescent yellow or LED blue-white that stung your eyes and made you want turn them off to give your poor eyes a break. Blue-white misery or flashing, pounding, red and blue and yellow or sneeze-rendering pink or drunken orange. And that was nighttime.

But then daytime would start pushing night out of the way, or maybe night just got tired of it all, and all those lights would turn off. And, then…well then all the streets showed that they were cracked. That the asphalt had long since stopped being that shiny, new, glossy black and you realized that it was grey. And there wasn’t any sunlight or pretty sky with clouds to paint the buildings and they were just grey too. Grey and squatting in the trash and the dirt that swirled across the sidewalks and past the hobo-filled alleys and rot-stinking drains. And all that was grey too. Just grey and grey and grey and grey. Until you never wanted to leave your room because, on the one hand, the sky was empty and, on the other, the ground was grey.

But there was a tree across the street, and it was the greenest tree that you ever did see. It was tall and towering, bigger around than my arms could reach (though I wouldn’t ever have tried to prove this in person). And its leaves were wide and glorious, bigger than my own hand all spread out, and they cast forth this beautiful green glow on everything that came near them. The broken old bench at its knotted, rooty feet, the pockmarked sidewalk, the needle-drunk vagrant, the high-shined exec, the grey buildings that leaned in over it; all of them reflected its glow. It even smelled green down there, with that earthy, lively hum that tickled your taste buds and made your ears sing.

I found myself crying the first time it shed its leaves, leaving the trunk and branches all bare and brown. But at least it was brown and not grey and the memory of that green wasn’t lost when all the leaves turned red or yellow and were swept up and tossed into black bags and hoisted into the dumpster half a block away. Because the buildings still leaned in, hoping to hold some of the green in so the wind couldn’t blow it away. And the bench and the sidewalk and the vagrant and the exec, they all seemed a little greener than they must have been.

I wept again when spring finally rolled around that first time and I could look out and see the green fuzz that peeked from all the brownness. Then brown and green were something beautiful; the brown because it endured, but the green because it was green. And I could look out across that street and my heart would sing and maybe, just maybe, I could reflect a little bit of green. And that’s how it would go, falling to winter then springing to summer, with that glorious green, on the greenest tree that you ever did see. And, in all my grey imaginings and workings and failings and hopings, I could always see a little shimmer of green.

Except when I didn’t.

I don’t think the change happened all at once, but I think we didn’t know it was coming, didn’t even guess it, because it came in summer. Because there came that one day where I looked out that steel and glass building that leaned over across the street just to get a glimpse of all that green and the building began to lean away. It leaned away and I just had to look over at the green. And it looked fine, but the unease laid a seed deep in my gut. It might have been the light or some funny shift in the clouds or maybe just a little puff of wind, but the green had lost some part of its greenness.

The next day was the same and the next and the next.

Summer began to roll to its close and the buildings all were standing up straight, not looking at the tree. Gazing across, it was something I didn’t recognize. It was the exact same tree, I guess, but it couldn’t have been. I stopped looking out the window.

Fall came and I glanced out once more, just to see the leaves change and fall in scattered heaps of orange and yellow. But they stayed all sorts of green. But it was never the right green and never did glow. All over again, I stopped looking. Nighttime came and those noisy, hovering lights came on and the tree was lost in folds of noisy, noiseless light. Night went to sleep. The lights went out. I tried to sleep in the darkness but couldn’t. Hadn’t been able to sleep in weeks. And how could I? For so long, too long, I’d had the warmest green nightlight waiting outside my window and across the street. The comforting glow was gone and how could I sleep?

Day came, the sunrise, and I couldn’t look, but I couldn’t not look. I got out of that cold, sterile grey bed, slipped on the closest of my clothes, slid on my shoes, and slithered out the door. Across the street, in the pale grey morning, I had to go, had to stand in front of that tree. The leaves were still green, but they were dry and withered; their lively hue drained away. I reached out a hand to lightly touch the nearest leaf, but its edges crumbled at my touch. It didn’t fall though, as if the tree was mindlessly holding on to it, waiting for some green life to return. Waiting, just like I was.

I walked underneath the dead green shade. The plot around the tree was bare, the earth exposed in dry, grey cracks. I came up to that beautiful brown trunk and put my hand on it. The green was faded but, in the barren shade, the trunk was still brown. Brown and enduring. Waiting. But the rising sunlight flickered between the tall, sky-reaching buildings and pierced the shade beneath the tree branches. And I saw, I understood. The trunk wasn’t all brown, not like I had thought it was. And the leaves wouldn’t ever be the right kind of green again. I looked real close and I knew. All that brown and all that green, it was tinted, tainted. And that taint…well I could only describe it one way as I turned and crossed the street. It was grey.