Nurtured on the bosom of failure. I have nothing to claim to my name, no wife or child that I can call my own.
I planted a tree once with my father when I was no more than a mere boy.
I still remember the day we planted it, my father and I. I was just a boy, full of dreams I barely understood, standing there with dirt under my nails and hope in my chest. He told me it would grow tall and strong, a testament to time and patience. I believed him back then, as children do.
Now, that tree towers above me, its branches reaching further than I ever could. Every time I visit, it feels like a reminder, standing in quiet judgment. It’s weathered storms and seasons, while I—well, I’ve merely endured. It grew as I faltered, rooted deep in the soil where I left so much of myself.
I stand beneath it sometimes, looking up through the canopy, wondering what it thinks of me. Does it remember that boy who planted it, full of wild ambition? Or does it pity the man I’ve become—rootless, wandering, tangled in regrets?
Maybe it’s not pity. Maybe it’s something else. A lesson, perhaps, in silence. In persistence. But damn it, I can’t help but feel mocked by the way it sways in the wind, untethered by failure, unaffected by time. Do trees understand dreams? Or do they simply grow, oblivious to the weight of what we carry?
He should be grateful to me. I gave him life, didn’t I? Buried him as a mere sapling in the earth and offered him my own dreams for nourishment. It was my hands that cradled him in his infancy, my sweat that moistened the soil, my father’s words that whispered promises of growth and resilience.
And what did he do with that gift? He thrived. Towered above me with arrogance, his leaves dancing in the wind as if to mock the man who never quite found his footing. He never thanked me, not once. No acknowledgment for the one who gave him his first breath of life.
Yet I still return, foolishly. As if waiting for some sign of recognition, a rustle of gratitude in his branches. But no. He just stands there, oblivious to my sacrifices. Perhaps he believes he owes me nothing—that life was his by right.
But I know better. Without me, he’d have been nothing more than a forgotten seed in the dirt. And still, I envy him. His growth. His defiant existence. Perhaps, in his own quiet way, he envies me too—wishing he could know the madness of dreaming and the agony of watching those dreams wilt… But he’s a tree. What would he know of failure?
What if, in a moment of despair I took the axe and ended his life?
I’ve thought about it more than once, I’ll admit. The image comes to me in those dark moments—my hands gripping the worn handle, the first swing cutting deep into his flesh. I can almost hear the sound it would make, a crack like a scream muffled by the weight of years. A life severed in pieces, chip by chip, until he finally crashes to the ground, his arrogant height humbled at last.
For a moment, I’d feel power—vindication. I’d look down at him, his once-proud branches sprawled lifeless at my feet. “Now you understand,” I’d say. “Now you know what it’s like to fall.”
But then what? Would it ease the weight I carry? Would the bitterness finally drain from my veins as the tree bled its sap into the soil? Or would I stand there, axe in hand, more broken than he ever was? After all, ending him wouldn’t undo the years he thrived while I struggled. Killing him wouldn’t resurrect the boy who believed in the future.
Perhaps he’d forgive me in death, offering me one final lesson: that envy and despair bear no fruit. That no matter how many trees I cut down, the emptiness inside me is my own to bear. Would I dare to listen? Or would I swing the axe again, and again, in search of a peace that might never come?
Gods… sometimes I don’t know whether I hate the tree or if I hate myself for needing him so much.
That cursed tree. He’s more than just wood and leaves. He’s the last piece of my father still standing, the last living fragment of a time when I believed the world held endless possibilities. Every ring in his trunk marks the passing of years since those days—since my father’s hands guided mine, steady and sure, showing me how to plant something that might outlive us both.
Perhaps that’s why I can’t bring myself to take the axe. Killing the tree would be like killing the memory of him. That quiet presence, always there in the back of my mind—the voice that told me to be patient, to tend to the things that matter most. When I stand beneath the tree, I can still feel it, faint but present, as though my father left a part of himself in that soil.
It hurts, though. Seeing it thrive, unchanging, while everything else fades. My father is gone. The boy I was is gone. Even the dreams I once had have withered like leaves in a bitter autumn wind. Yet the tree—he stands tall, as if defying time itself, as if to remind me that life can endure even when it’s stripped of everything familiar.
Maybe that’s the real lesson he and my father left behind. Life doesn’t wait for anyone. It grows, it stretches, it thrives, even when you feel lost and broken. And maybe—just maybe—that’s enough. Maybe standing here beneath his branches is the closest I’ll ever come to feeling whole again.
So, no… I won’t take the axe. Not today. Not ever. He’s all I have left of my father, and as long as he stands, a part of that past still lives. And maybe… maybe that’s worth more than all the dreams I’ve lost.
