The Eating Tree

There are experiences and ideas that we have as children that are vivid and real. Some stick with us for a while before we shed them like dead skin cells. Others live within us dormant; lurking. In my neighborhood, every kid's parents warned us not to go near one particular tree. We called it the Eating Tree. Supposedly it was an Oak but I never saw acorn nor shell litter its grounds.

In my dreams I remember those gnarled blackened branches with bark that cuts stinging lines into my hands and shins. Straddled over the the crotch of the tree, I stare into an endless dark that makes the hole seem larger than the trunk itself and smell smoke wafting up. Down there Kenny is still alive. Trapped there during that storm. When the lightning strikes as I know it will, I see his face squinting at me, a single scraped and bloody hand reaching in vain to bridge the distance between us. It's not enough. It's never enough.

When I wake, the tree is outside my window. Not the same tree but one like it. And it is raining.