I am walking down a long dirt road with nothing but wheat on either side of me. It waves and tickles at my face whispering at my hands as I walk slowly towards the willow tree. On my back two great golden wings spread far and wide, but they are not my wings I am only holding them for someone I am sure is a dream friend. Someone I have yet to know but what we have is so beautiful and pure it makes my heart ache because of it. I reach the tree in its splendid glory and inside is a little blonde body nestled into the roots like the water that supplies its life, and I’m scared for the blonde girl. I reach out to touch her and my grandmothers story begins to carve into the bark of the tree itself. I read slowly and cautiously looking at the two bloody nubs where the willow girl’s wings used to be. I gaze into the bark of the old willow tree and see these words,
I hope you find this the unbelievable believable story of the girl named Willow. If you had happened to be driving by the sugar creek on one unbelievably calm afternoon you would have seen a particularly sour girl. Although she was often happy, before jumping into the river she had been bitten by a bumble bee (henceforth the sour mood). Her long blonde hair was almost white in contrast to the dark water she swam in. the sun dipped low in the clouds by the time she found her way home. She stood on the edge of her family’s farm and shivered with horror and cold as she discovered the clouds hiding the sun were actually billows of smoke. A massive fire had run through the farm killing everything in its path. The sunlight fled out of her hair as it turned white with shock. She saw the death and destruction, and inside her body, her heart grew cold. Inside of her little blonde soul her heart broke with hate and she began to doubt God. Willow cried as she ran to the edge of town where a massive tree shaded with long hanging leaves of mossy green. She sat under that tree for fourteen days and nights hating humanity and turning her face from her god. She thought of her lovely dark mother and her handsome fair father and her brothers pooling green eyes. The tears never stopped for the heartbroken blonde girl who had lost so much. On the fifteenth day she awoke from deep within the roots of the long leaved tree with a pain in her stomach and an ache where her heart was. There was a sharp jab at her elbow and she looked down, before her was a team of three sharp daggers. The handle of one was an onyx gem, the second an emerald, and the third a plain wooden handle but no doubt the sharpest of them all,that she recognized as her fathers. The anger and hate welled up inside her to the point of pain and she thrust the dagger into her heart all the way to the wooden handle taking her own life.
She entered the gates of heaven floating up past the trees leaves. She stood before god who bellowed “welcome my child to heaven I have been waiting for you, come and share my life here and forget your hate” willow cried at the sight of this man the lord and she found the person who had taken such a great deal from her and while she asked him for nothing, he still wanted more. She cried out to all who could hear her, “there is no god, who are you to judge me and take from me? You demand I stay with you when it was you who ruined my life?” In her heart she knew the words were wrong but hurt had clouded her vision to the point she was blind of what was being offered to her. The king of kings cast her out of heaven, heartbroken by her words and hurt by her cruelty. Willow fell back to earth the feathers of her wings coming out one by one. The tears of god fell down upon her as she struck the ground at the base of the tree. To this day her spirit is trapped crying in the roots of the tree. And so the story of the weeping willow tree.
It surprises me still, when I awake from the same dream I’ve had since before I can remember, that I cannot fly away.