The cold bitter air of winter pierces my skin as I walk through the shady woods towards the pasture behind my house. I rest my frozen aching feet as I sit alone on a tree that has collapsed from the weight of the ice and snow piled up on it. All of a sudden I lose focus of my mission to seek out the pasture and sit with the tree. I identify with its pain, with its absence of life, and of love. Just as it has collapsed in the bitter cold I myself have collapsed. However, my breaking apart is not physically debilitating.

Just as the tree once felt the nourishment of the sun, I once felt the same supplement from love. As the tree lies broken and torn from its devastating fall, I am a walking open wound. With the absence of the sun the tree has collected a detrimental “coldness”, I myself have grown cold and bitter from a similar absence.

Soon my fate will meet that of this lonesome tree. Soon my heart will accumulate the same detrimental coldness, and I too will break to pieces.

Laura Ashley

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