If trees were people, they’d awaken with drowsy grace from their nests in the warm, loamy clay turf of the earth. Cautiously, they would uncurl their roots from out beneath them, massaging away the tense coils until they twist gently along the winding hallways of the soil.
If trees were people, they would rise from the dirt in a strange cacophony of murmuring, not quite speech, more akin to the gentle burbles of breeze-blown leaves, and sifting branches, composing an ethereal, otherworldly tongue. One that refuses to seek refuge on the lips of any human being.
If trees were people, they would overflow with pure, irrepressible joy upon witnessing each other, clambering from deep, looming chasms in the ground, in their rejuvenated, human forms, the very pinnacles of strange elegance, supernaturally flawed beauty. Willowy limbs and locks of hair a million different shades of green: sage, lime, pine, and pistachio, even aquamarine, with the faintest traces of azure weaving through the tresses of a blue spruce.
If trees were people, they’d dance with their hands intertwined with one another’s, in a lumpy circular movement, until the sun begins to peep over the blue-black blanket of the horizon, coloring the dusky sky like a palette of pastel paints. Gypsies of the natural world, chanting an ancient melody, the music of the earth in their dulcet, rumbling altos. Only when the sun begins her ascent in the now milky blue sky would they break away from the ring, their fingers splintering as they pull away, almost as if they had grown together, crackling ferociously as they snap. They’d look on in wonder, as the infant morning stretches above them, infinite possibilities. If trees were people, they’d bleed golden syrup, teardrops of maple sap coursing down their smoky, brown bark skin as the shining ax of the logger bites into their middles. One tree, a fig, would let out a wail cloaked in sorrow, longing to leak into her mournful cry as she is severed in half, falling softly with a muffled thump onto the forest floor. The logger’s little daughter, standing a pace behind him, can see what he cannot.
If trees were people, they’d strike a small child, dressed in vivid, crimson pajamas, as the most enchanting beings she’d ever seen. She’d let out a little sob, synonymous with that of the fig tree’s cry as she tumbles headfirst, distraught at the end of something so inexplicably wondrous. As her father would lumber away into the distance, his instrument of death slung precariously over one shoulder, she’d kneel on the earth, letting the pine needles prickle through the woolen fabric of her pajamas.
Tracing the intricate patterns on the taupe skin of the tree-maiden with her fingertip, she’d release a silent prayer. The others, gooey with sticky tears of tree sap would sink smoothly back into the ground, their roots reaching out to one another, joining their compassionate visitor in a quiet plea to the universe.
If trees were people, they’d soon realize that trees were never meant to be people at all.