Fruit of a Poison Tree

V

And it grew both day and night.

Till it bore an apple bright.

I awoke in the middle of the evening, around four o'clock. With listlessness in my soul, I slid off my bed and walk around my room, pacing around the jagged perimeter, around my desk, bed, chair...around and around, faster and faster until I am dizzy. Looking outside to see that the sun is still up in the sky, I rest my hands on my hips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a book lying on the floor, one I had discarded some time ago and never picked up again. So I flop to the floor, propping my feet up against the window sill and thumb through the pages until I get to the dog-eared page where I left off.

The book is about a teenage girl who, after the death of her mother, runs away from home searching for solace and memory of what she has lost, and what she learns along the way. I have never been a particularly quick reader, never really understanding what the advantage of that was. It is better to read slower, enjoy the book, chew on the words and concepts, and get to enjoy it for a long time, right?

But for some reason, I read this book quickly, almost skimming the paragraphs and having to go back to reread them so that I am not lost. Eventually, after more than an hour and a half of trying to get myself to focus enough, I set the book aside. Blowing a lock of hair out of my eyes, I sit up on the floor, propping my hands behind me and pulling myself into a cross-legged seat. I start to hum a tune, a symphony I play on the piano occasionally. Laughing at myself, I am reminded of why I do not grace the world with my singing ability, or lack thereof.

Pushing myself to my feet, I look out as the sun is hung low in the sky. Tilting my head, I realize that the gorgeous colors are a challenge, that the rise and fall of the hills makes a beautiful frame. So I go back into my desk and dig out my old pastels from my art phase a couple of years ago. Pulling my hair up to the window, I use the ledge like a table and I lean forward to get just the right angle.

I know that the picture in front of me is fleeting, that it will soon be gone and I need to hurry. But with every moment, the colors become deeper, the vibrancy greater, and the beauty even more indescribable. So I find myself just watching, doing everything to take a picture in my mind so that I can remember it forever instead of trying to copy something I cannot and will never be able to imitate. And when the sun sinks below, the colors are gone.

In the fading light, I scrawl out the vision in my memory, hoping that it will at least resemble what I had seen, knowing that it will pale in comparison. When I finish, the light is nearly gone and I am squinting hard at it to be able to see. Standing, I turn on the light so that I can look at the finished product. It is far from the worst I have ever done, so I tuck it away with my favorite drawings from years ago, stuffed in a drawer, only pulled out on occasions of significance and nostalgia, moments I want to remember myself younger.

My mind comes back to thinking about Adam. He is dead. I tighten my face, from my eyebrows to my lips, wondering what that really means. I know that I will never see him again, that no one will, but there is also the feeling that he is not really gone. That no one can every really be gone, like Tyler had said. He lives on in the people who loved him.

I think about Adam's life and I wonder, if he had known the number of his days, if he would have done things differently. If he would have chosen another path, if he would never have taken his mother's pain pills, seeing if he could change the course of his life. Is that even possible? If you knew how you were going to die, could you prevent it? Or the future written just as history is, unchangeable and undeniable? Is our time simply our time? Something in me tells me that it is, that there is nothing anyone can do to change that.