Nick Bythrow

The Tree Dream Nick Bythrow

Cascading myself into the sea was the easiest route I could have taken. To have the wind whip against my cheeks, invisible razorblades cutting at my falling body. To feel the hard, drum-like beating against my chest as though a bat taking flight had lodged itself between my ribcage. The salt of the sea dozens of approaching feet below, splashing up in white-specked waves of frustration and anger. My eyes would have caught a vision of this dark blue frothing. It was a short but sweet event, an initiation of some kind that didn't truly need to happen, but would for the sake of my personal sanity. I would never again need to worry and wonder and fear, for the sea would swallow me into its abyssal gorge and free me from my nightmare.... To think I speak of it as if this had been my end. For there were to be many more trials beyond those waves. One of which I see, even today, cresting over the horizon, a violet hue shining in the gloom. I ask, now, how everything in my chest became the swirling torrent it is today. The answer is always the same: It was under the Tree where it all became known. It started the night I went to heaven.