Attach a note to a tree

Life is a funny thing, it comes and it goes, you can watch it fade from a person's eyes in a matter of seconds. When I try think of something good, my mind always brings me back to a tree. An apple tree. It stood at the back of my house, shielded from the house by an old wall. I had tied rope around it, allowing me to climb higher into the top branches.

One time it was frosty and my foot slipped, I remember not being scared of landing for some reason, like I thought I wasn't going to land. At the last second my hand caught a rope and it stopped me falling. I wasn't scared of landing, I was just scared of falling.

This apple tree grew the nicest apples, I'd pick them and press them in the kitchen, making the sweetest apple juice ever. I'd sit up the tree the rest of the day, reading my book and sipping my apple juice. Only coming down when it was getting dark. Pushing even that. Saying that a kind firefly would light my page for me.

I knew every inch of that tree. From the moss to the leaves. From when the flowers would bloom to when the apples would fall. I knew it like I knew myself. Inside out and backwards. Could climb it in the pitch black. Could find parts of myself that I wanted to when I wanted to.

But now it's gone. Withered up and brown moss. No more apples and no more flowers. Branches have fallen and twisted. Shaping the tree differently, I don't know it this way, would slip if I tried to close my eyes and climb. My mind has changed too. The way I knew it twisted and turned. Now instead of a meadow, it's a long corridor with locked doors. I'm running out of keys.

So I'll enter the door which leads to the back of the garden. I'll sit up that tree and look at the familiar branches, I'll sip my apple juice and read my book. But it's not the same. Just a memory.

This is my last note. My last attempt to relearn that tree. 377 words. Not much. It had more leaves.