The day the kid grew a beard..

by Rodrigo F.
 
I saw this kid
He lived in a small orange house
Every morning he would come running down the alley to the patch of green where me and my fellow friend lived
I'm not sure but I remember he'd shoot a ball at me and at my partner
I always thought that that sport was something humans called soccer.
When the ball hit me, I wouldn't howl or scream, because it made my trunk tickle.
He kick the ball in a way it seemed to be harmless, it rather looked like playful.
Since I was a kid, my mother,Earth, would tell me about the cruelty of the humans.
She'd tell me how they were killing her, at this very moment.
This created fear in me, until this boy came around.
We had fun, we were the posts of the goal, or he would look at us like the goal keepers.
He'd try to hit the hollow space between me and my fellow tree.
That ball like a woodpecker, hitting me and opening me on every blow, but I knew he didn't do it to hurt me, he did it as a necessity.
Just a  like a woodpecker needs me to have a home and feed its young, the kid needed me to supply the only thing humans really need, company
He told me his secrets, he trusted my branches would protect his every secrets.
He'd climb to the top of me and pretend I was a fort that would protect him from all the evil his race had caused.
Maybe I could not speak, but I sent the wind as a messenger, to make him understand, that I understood, and he did.
The kid...
               He grew
                              He grew
                                   He grew

              He grew

Finally he went away, to a place, humans call "college"
It's a place where supposedly, kids turn into something else....

Until one day, he came back.
He had changed, he had a beard and he was tall and strong, even the look in his eyes changed.
I thought he came back to play with me!
To replace all those years he went away, and were he left a hollow trunk.
Strangely, he had an axe.

The wind passing through my leaves
It whispered something.....
It replayed the words it carried again, only once

"I must cut him, he obstructs the view..."

I realized it was the voice of the kid, which had turned stronger and lower!


     Soon I understood. That was not the same kid I saw before he went away.
When he finally face all the pain and the grief in the world, he became a man.
He had become something unrecognizable


          Man, a feeling less creature, a beast in nature.
"The one who kills"-whispered my partner..

                    TheA

                                X
                                                                 E
                                                                 ..
                                 ..
It cut thorought me. I felt the cold metal into me.
Delibering a killing blow.
Now the kid was not innocent any more, he did it intentionally
HE WAS NOT A KID, HE WAS A MAN!
Soon I...
                    Fell
                             Fell
                                       Fell
                                                  Fell
To the ground
I collapsed and felt the last of of life slipping away from my branches....

I felt mother Earth, the one who fed me and embraced me, and once again it held me tight, but this time
She was not





Hot..

She had left me to die, knowing the humans had do this to me. I finally felt what its like to be hurt...

I understood what the humans had done all this time.

but soon....

I died