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Description
I'll never forget that spring, that spring after you moved in when you offered to help me pull weeds. Between my sidewalk and my street is a strip of bark that was grass in front of all the other houses, but we couldn't afford to maintain that much more lawn. You saw me squatting there, watching the weeds rise in the new sun and plotting my counterattack, and you said you'd be glad to help.

I agreed, but on one condition-I get to pull all the tiny maple trees, and you pull everything else. You took one look at the giant maple in my yard, at the weeds that were outnumbered by the sprouts that sprouted from the seeds that flew on their little wings but didn't go too far. You laughed and said I gotta deal. I laughed and said get to work.

As you were slowly digging out networks of roots, you noticed me delicately plucking tiny tree after tiny tree, my hands dancing. The maple sprouts hardly even qualify as weeds, I explained. They inch slowly out of the ground, tap root first, then little cotyledons, and then the first two baby leaves. They know nothing, they suspect nothing, they are prepared for nothing because they only want to be big trees when they grow up; they never expect me to be there, waiting to kill them mercifully while they are young. Weeds act as an army with the goal of conquering the yard, so they grow as fast as they can, exploding at once into a fan of roots below and a fan of leaves above. By the time you catch them, it is too late to show them mercy.

The starving trees I'd thrown on the sidewalk and left to die caught your attention. "Mercy?" you asked me. "You're suffocating babies!" Ah, but tomorrow morning, they will have died, and what else would I do with them? At least I don't taunt them with the possibility of growing.

..

I'll never forget that summer, that summer after the park re-opened when I found a secret garden there, and I let you in. It had been built, maintained, and then closed indefinitely, and it was comfortably overgrown but still very much alive. There was a weathered wooden bench under a tree that was always covered in flowers when many of the others were somewhere between shedding all their petals and growing them back.

It was on that bench that we stared at the trees and the bushes and the long grass, and they reminded us of childhood when all we needed was a wild place to play. We told stories about schoolyards and parks and abandoned lots and losing it all as we grew, and loves we'd loved and left behind. Maybe it was just the sweet summer air, but something about our secret garden prompted me to let you into mine.

I told you how I'd tried love before, how I realized it was better to lock my doors and let them search for the key instead of throwing every door and window wide open for all the bugs to explore. "How can the gardener get in to maintain you, if the door is locked?" you wondered. "He doesn't need to," I explained, "just like in this secret garden."

With your pocketknife I carefully cut into the bark of our tree, cut through the layers in disrepair and exposed just a bit of green. "This tree, on the outside, may appear dead, but this part beneath the skin is still wick." With your hand you carefully cut into my chest, peeled back me skin and exposed my ribs. You pointed to my heart, just barely visible, and said the same thing.

The key had been buried right next to the fence, you said. Maybe I didn't really want to keep people away from it after all, or maybe you just had to realize it was never really that difficult to find.

..

I'll never forget that fall, that fall after we'd made the secret garden our own when we still loved there every day even though the sweet summer air was getting chilly and the flowers weren't growing back. The maple in my yard was slowly fading from green to brown, and its little seeds were experimenting with their little wings but not getting very far. When I complained about all the trees I'd have to pluck next spring, you laughed and promised you'd be there to pull all the weeds for me.

After sitting together for so long, never minding the new harsh winds and cold rains, we both caught horrible colds. I would lay in bed, and you would wrap up in a blanket that you swore you didn't need and bring me Mountain Dew and soup with lots of onions. We would joke about creating a new mutation of the flu virus that would destroy the whole world, and then we'd kiss anyway.

In time we got better, and we sniffled and shivered but we smiled like we'd never smiled before. You took me to a forgotten corner of the park, under the Monroe Street Bridge and inside an equally forgotten fence. From a little patch of bare grass among wild weeds, we watched the river's strong summer current fade away. The trees that grew along the riverbank were fading too, crying their now-useless leaves into the one-way road to the Pacific.

When it was too cold to sit on the bench under our tree, I put on my extra layers and my jacket, and you complained that you couldn't reach me anymore through them. "You are an onion!" you said. But I love onions, and so do you. From under all my wraps, I could still feel your hands, so I let your protests fall. "When the spring comes again," I said, "I will shed these onion layers for you, and the sun will bake our skin while we pull weeds."

..

I'll never forget that winter, that winter after leaves and frost formed a crust over the ground when the world went to sleep, and so did we. The snow piled up on our tree and on our bench, and we gradually forgot where they were. Our whole secret garden turned pristine white, and soon it was no different from any other part of the park, except that only our footsteps disturbed it.

Eventually, those faded too. Snow would fall faster than we could walk, and in time you gave up and decided not to walk at all. "Why bother?" you asked. "Let's just stay inside."

That was our mistake. When the world went to sleep, we tried to stay awake, but we couldn't fight nature for long. One day you realized there was no point in resistance, and you told me so. What stung me was not so much that we couldn't survive without sunlight in a world where everything else had surrendered, but that you were so good at convincing me that we really could.

"You are a tree," I said. "You are a tiny maple sprouting in my heart."
"Then pull me up," you said. "I am no weed; I will be easy to uproot. Leave me on the sidewalk to die young; it is the most merciful way."
"No," I said. "Our agreement was that I pull the trees and you pull the weeds. If you are a tree, you cannot pull yourself."
"Too late," you said, "It is best for me to leave while I am still a little tree, before my roots take hold and I grow into a big tree."

In the winter, most living things try to sleep, but some just die. Next spring, I'll know which we were.

Description
I'll never forget that spring, that spring after you moved in when you offered to help me pull weeds. Between my sidewalk and my street is a strip of bark that was grass in front of all the other houses, but we couldn't afford to maintain that much more lawn. You saw me squatting there, watching the weeds rise in the new sun and plotting my counterattack, and you said you'd be glad to help.

I agreed, but on one condition-I get to pull all the tiny maple trees, and you pull everything else. You took one look at the giant maple in my yard, at the weeds that were outnumbered by the sprouts that sprouted from the seeds that flew on their little wings but didn't go too far. You laughed and said I gotta deal. I laughed and said get to work.

As you were slowly digging out networks of roots, you noticed me delicately plucking tiny tree after tiny tree, my hands dancing. The maple sprouts hardly even qualify as weeds, I explained. They inch slowly out of the ground, tap root first, then little cotyledons, and then the first two baby leaves. They know nothing, they suspect nothing, they are prepared for nothing because they only want to be big trees when they grow up; they never expect me to be there, waiting to kill them mercifully while they are young. Weeds act as an army with the goal of conquering the yard, so they grow as fast as they can, exploding at once into a fan of roots below and a fan of leaves above. By the time you catch them, it is too late to show them mercy.

The starving trees I'd thrown on the sidewalk and left to die caught your attention. "Mercy?" you asked me. "You're suffocating babies!" Ah, but tomorrow morning, they will have died, and what else would I do with them? At least I don't taunt them with the possibility of growing.

..

I'll never forget that summer, that summer after the park re-opened when I found a secret garden there, and I let you in. It had been built, maintained, and then closed indefinitely, and it was comfortably overgrown but still very much alive. There was a weathered wooden bench under a tree that was always covered in flowers when many of the others were somewhere between shedding all their petals and growing them back.

It was on that bench that we stared at the trees and the bushes and the long grass, and they reminded us of childhood when all we needed was a wild place to play. We told stories about schoolyards and parks and abandoned lots and losing it all as we grew, and loves we'd loved and left behind. Maybe it was just the sweet summer air, but something about our secret garden prompted me to let you into mine.

I told you how I'd tried love before, how I realized it was better to lock my doors and let them search for the key instead of throwing every door and window wide open for all the bugs to explore. "How can the gardener get in to maintain you, if the door is locked?" you wondered. "He doesn't need to," I explained, "just like in this secret garden."

With your pocketknife I carefully cut into the bark of our tree, cut through the layers in disrepair and exposed just a bit of green. "This tree, on the outside, may appear dead, but this part beneath the skin is still wick." With your hand you carefully cut into my chest, peeled back me skin and exposed my ribs. You pointed to my heart, just barely visible, and said the same thing.

The key had been buried right next to the fence, you said. Maybe I didn't really want to keep people away from it after all, or maybe you just had to realize it was never really that difficult to find.

..

I'll never forget that fall, that fall after we'd made the secret garden our own when we still loved there every day even though the sweet summer air was getting chilly and the flowers weren't growing back. The maple in my yard was slowly fading from green to brown, and its little seeds were experimenting with their little wings but not getting very far. When I complained about all the trees I'd have to pluck next spring, you laughed and promised you'd be there to pull all the weeds for me.

After sitting together for so long, never minding the new harsh winds and cold rains, we both caught horrible colds. I would lay in bed, and you would wrap up in a blanket that you swore you didn't need and bring me Mountain Dew and soup with lots of onions. We would joke about creating a new mutation of the flu virus that would destroy the whole world, and then we'd kiss anyway.

In time we got better, and we sniffled and shivered but we smiled like we'd never smiled before. You took me to a forgotten corner of the park, under the Monroe Street Bridge and inside an equally forgotten fence. From a little patch of bare grass among wild weeds, we watched the river's strong summer current fade away. The trees that grew along the riverbank were fading too, crying their now-useless leaves into the one-way road to the Pacific.

When it was too cold to sit on the bench under our tree, I put on my extra layers and my jacket, and you complained that you couldn't reach me anymore through them. "You are an onion!" you said. But I love onions, and so do you. From under all my wraps, I could still feel your hands, so I let your protests fall. "When the spring comes again," I said, "I will shed these onion layers for you, and the sun will bake our skin while we pull weeds."

..

I'll never forget that winter, that winter after leaves and frost formed a crust over the ground when the world went to sleep, and so did we. The snow piled up on our tree and on our bench, and we gradually forgot where they were. Our whole secret garden turned pristine white, and soon it was no different from any other part of the park, except that only our footsteps disturbed it.

Eventually, those faded too. Snow would fall faster than we could walk, and in time you gave up and decided not to walk at all. "Why bother?" you asked. "Let's just stay inside."

That was our mistake. When the world went to sleep, we tried to stay awake, but we couldn't fight nature for long. One day you realized there was no point in resistance, and you told me so. What stung me was not so much that we couldn't survive without sunlight in a world where everything else had surrendered, but that you were so good at convincing me that we really could.

"You are a tree," I said. "You are a tiny maple sprouting in my heart."
"Then pull me up," you said. "I am no weed; I will be easy to uproot. Leave me on the sidewalk to die young; it is the most merciful way."
"No," I said. "Our agreement was that I pull the trees and you pull the weeds. If you are a tree, you cannot pull yourself."
"Too late," you said, "It is best for me to leave while I am still a little tree, before my roots take hold and I grow into a big tree."

In the winter, most living things try to sleep, but some just die. Next spring, I'll know which we were.