Every Tree You Pass Says Your Name

Job Childers
Sep 2, 2018 · 5 min read

“How are you?” he asked me on the roof of my house.

“Good.” I said, although the truth was not good. But even more true, good, because you’re here. Bad because once you leave…

I loved summer nights like this. The air was warm, but the breeze was cool and welcomed. There was not a single cloud in the sky. The moon was bright and confident, showing off its full roundness with no shame. And the stars danced around; their lights singing a silent chorus that could only be seen. He suggested that we climb to the roof and close at least some distance between us and the perforated veil. What better place to talk about things? Its all I really wanted.

“You?” I asked.

“Really good.” he said.

“What makes it really good?”

“I just feel… energetic.”

“Yeah, the stars will do that.” I shifted my weight closer to him. “Really makes you think about how pointless all this is. Earth is just a tiny rock in an infinite universe. But going to college is the most important thing in the world.”

Warren laughed, true and honest from the belly. “Life is for getting a boring job making money so your children can maybe pursue their dreams, but they’re just going to end up in college and at a boring job so their children can pursue their dreams. Ugh it’s a frustrating cycle.”

“It is.”

He turned to me. “Do you want to go school next year?”

“No but… I don’t want to not be in school either. You know?”

“Yeah.”

I’m not sure what happened next. Maybe the cosmic nihilism gave me a spark of courage, but whatever it was, I took it, and didn’t question.

I sat up and looked at Warren. “Have you ever liked a boy?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “No. Never,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Not even once?”

“Nope.”

A strange calm overtook me. Like a blanket of warmth. Even though this wasn’t what I wanted, it felt alright. I guess it’s because I didn’t believe it.

We stayed out there for another three hours, then he got up and said he needed to leave. I told him that was fine, and I’d see him tomorrow, or in a few days.

After a few moments alone, I was jittery, and I needed to leave. That word echoed in my head, in my ears, in my eyes. Nope. Such a gross, crude word. I hated it. Yet he spoke it and somehow I loved it. You could say I was jealous of it, of his certainty, of his confidence.

So I walked to the park that was down the road and across the street. I passed the tennis courts and found a bench in the trees. But as I walked, I kept hearing my name. Every step, and the voices grew louder and louder. I stopped, and they were silenced.

So I kept moving, and they came back. Louder, and more populated.

I stopped again. Silence. Not even a rustle in the leaves. The air was still, and very warm.

Then I walked again, and finally made it to the bench. But when I sat, the voices did not stop. They yelled in a single chorus, high voices, low voices, neither which were discernibly male or female or human for that matter. There were so many that I could no longer hear my own thoughts. I couldn’t bare it anymore, and finally I screamed, “WHAT!

Silence.

“Oh.” Anger burned in my chest. “It’s you.”

The crickets were loud, and a breeze twirled the leaves, but the trees themselves were silent.

I answered. “Is this a joke? You’re here right now, and you’re still silent? This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. ‘Relationship not religion,’ that’s bullshit. A relationship isn’t one sided.”

I stood up from the bench.

“You can’t leave me like this! Your silence is a cruel torment, and if you think this is good for me, or healthy in some way, then you’re not the thing I thought you were.

“Are you doing this to me just so I have no choice but to turn to you? I was on your side. My whole life was on your side! I was yours, all of me was yours. But I guess that was my mistake in the first place, huh? Complete dedication to one ideology blinded me to any other truth.

“I feel like a toy. Your students tell me that feeling the way I feel, being what I am is a curse. I’m poison to them. And here I am, with you, and you tell me nothing to comfort me, or assure me that I’m clean and good?”

I sat down and put my head in my hands and suppressed the sobs that came with such force.

“Maybe I’m not clean or good. Maybe I am a poison. Maybe I’m not trying enough.

“But how can that be? I’m in so much pain. They told me my whole life that you were compassionate and empathetic. That you loved people and you cared for them and you wanted them to live their fullest life. How can you do that when you suppress my feelings and desires, my human urges to do what my biology wants to do. Don’t forget that I’m a physical being.

“Where is the Jesus who saved the woman from the gang of men who were ready to stone her? Where is the Jesus that miraculously broke the bread so everyone could eat? Where is the Jesus who healed the sick and raised the dead? Where is he?”

I started shaking. “I am alone! All alone!”

The tears were overwhelming. I hated myself for crying. I wanted to kick and scream at him. I called him a coward, more than once. I wished that I could rip the roots of all of these trees out of the ground. I felt like a child.

Then a voice came from the trees. Not the one I expected. Not the deep booming voice, echoing through the world, shaking the ground. I wanted lightning, and a storm that would announce that he was finally here.

But all I heard was the soft voice of woman that said, “I know your pain.”

And I cried even more.

Job Childers

Written by

A storyteller, accidentally