You shelter me. I lie in your shade,

There's a tree in my back yard.
I call it "The Africa Tree" or more accurately, "My Africa Tree."
We owned the lot before we moved here and I never saw it.
I'm sure it existed, but I never saw it.
But when we moved here, it became mine. It suddenly existed for me.
It sits at the bottom of a hill on the river's edge and in the summer it is full and green, and lovely. In the winter it is cold, dark, twisted, but in a strange way still beautiful and always mine.
Although I know it exists and I see its beauty, I've never touched it. I only admire it from the balcony, from a distance. This wondrous thing I've never touched and yet it is mine.


You too are beautiful and distant and before I knew you existed, I did not need you, but knowing that you're there, however far away, you're a part of me.
And when you acknowledge me, I am full and alive, and when you don't, it is I who become cold, dark, twisted...alone.
Sometimes I think we're that tree. That by nature, we've grown together and sometimes it isn't pretty, but it's ours.