A City Tree
Its roots sink beneath the concrete slabs. They extend steadily into the earth, but before they can even hit their stride, the air thins out. Breathless, they turn back. They have to grow sideways now, chasing oxygen that lies closer to the surface. They run into unbudgeable bricks. Homes of a hundred people rest on them. The roots split and search for new paths. Blocked again and again, they divide further, until one finds a cracked edge to slip through. Above ground, stoic leaves brave the sting of sulphur. The trunk absorbs the blows of metal enclosures around gated communities. The sky never gets dark enough for stars to appear. Instead, the tree stares at the windows of high-rise buildings, as they dim one by one through the night.
The streets stay wide awake. Lamps glare. Tubelights from 24/7 stores ricochet off glass and asphalt, catching a canopy here, a branch there.
The tree mistakes this for day.
The leaves remain open. Cells multiply without rest. Every night fractures appear and are paved over in the sunlight, only to fracture again. The fissures accumulate. A low static hum settles into the tree’s core.
Over generations, its ancestors refined a set of instructions and whispered them to the young sapling. The roots must go deep, they said. That is where water waits. Light means work. Catch the photons falling from the sky. It’ll give you strength to draw water and pluck carbon. When the light disappears, the work stops. Close your leaves and let the cool wind guide you to sleep. When the days shorten, the leaves will fall. It keeps the water. It keeps you going.
But the city tree’s leaves fall without season. Some drop too soon to spare the tree; others cling too long, bedazzled by the ever-present light. The tree keeps working under false gods at night. The night photons are feeble and take too much without giving enough back. Still, the roots curve around foundations, leaves endure the fumes, and the bark absorbs the impacts. Sometimes people even pause near it, admiring how the tree looks when sodium lights and neon signage hit it at different strengths, tinting the leaves with unnatural shades of green and yellow.
The tree realises it must modify the instructions for the next sapling.
It’s all right if you cannot go deep. Do not worry if bricks turn you aside when you spread. The nights may drain you without much return. It’s okay if leaves fall or stay out of season.
Do not listen too closely to the static hum in the core.