There was a tree in my backyard that I used to climb whenever I was upset. I found that whenever I looked back on my memories of doing so, there was always a consistency in both temperature and color.
If my mind ever did flicker backwards into its own vortex of recollections, and I came to find myself standing off to the side within a situation of the past, this is what I experienced in these particulars: A blurred image of my younger self running to a tree that had leaves growing in a dome around its trunk. Following this I would be amongst the branches peering at my childish form swiftly making her way up, around, over, and under branches as she tried to reach the open air. Once she found her way back to the familiar branch that had leaves opening up to the sky, my older self who’d conjured up the memory would find herself being pulled back, back into her childhood body as it crouched in the tree.
There I was, gripping a fragile branch that bounced under my weight as I gazed out into heaven’s colored depths. The clouds would sometimes be nonexistent, sometimes thin sheets of rippled cream amongst the sky’s tinge of pink. The sun would be a cruelly warm orange that layered the green of the leaves and brightened my skin as the cool wind whipped away its illusion of heat. The leaves fluttered, clashing against each other so quickly the sound created a chaos, the breeze’s winding route throwing them together at such a speed they clapped such as only nature’s audience can.
At this point there was always a reluctant straightening of the legs as I stood up, tightly grasping my spindly branch as the one under my weight dipped and swayed. My anticipation must have been flecked in the gusts that nearly swept me out of the branches; I could inhale it in the chill of the evening.
I gazed out upon my neighborhood, my house, and my grassy yard. I could see the park across the street with a forested hill that loomed over me in my pitiful, singular tree. I took in the fences and let them vanish; I watched the houses melt under the scattered stars that blinked into sight as darkness ensued. I could see the world opening within itself and swallowing modern day. In its place, all my young, inexperienced eyes could see were miles upon miles of lush grass, blossoming flowers, towering trees, shimmering rivers under a glittering sunset sprinkled with stars.
Always a pink mixed with orange, which always faded into gray. There was always coolness, a cold comfort. This is what I would silently remark to myself as the older, aching, and hollowly bitter version of myself would float back into reality, leaving her youthful self in the tree amongst her glistening galaxy of hopeful imaginings and childish fantasy.