After moving away for a few years, he eventually returned one summer. For-sale
signs went up and down. Familiar faces faded . . . new ones appeared . . . and
coffee shops spilled over onto the street. He first moved to N.D.G in spring. Caught up in the storm that marks the end of youth and the start of manhood, his strides raced up Monkland avenue towards Villa Maria where he would try to steal a kiss from some fine maiden. The ancient trees arching over Harvard, Marcil, and Old Orchard, allowed the sun to pass through their branches, caressing his face with flowering fragrances. Preoccupied with the wild anticipation of first-love, he had not noticed that the trees where smiling as he skipped by. By autumn, the young man had sipped the bitter poison of the broken-hearted, such a deadly concoction when tasted for the fist time.
Along his familiar route, many times the trees shed a requiem of dead leaves to soften his heavy foot-falls until the Decarie overpass. Once there, he would try to spew the last of his pain into the maelstrom of concrete and noise that festered below . . . but his tears would only get lost in some cold drizzle. Absorbed in self-pity, he eventually swaggered back home in the dark, not noticing that the trees had sent their shadows to ensure the privacy he required.
After moving away for a few years, he eventually returned one summer. For-sale
signs went up and down. Familiar faces faded . . . new ones appeared . . . and
coffee shops spilled over onto the street.
But as he drove home on Marcil, always in a rush and cursing how difficult it had become to find parking, he never saw how the aged branches interlocked from both sides of the street, forming a welcome tunnel of vibrant green that danced in the wind. In between supper and bed, he would often go out for a jog. When it rained, he never noticed how the canopy of leaves sheltered him each time he ran underneath. Then, one winter, while jogging to the park, he saw the heavy machinery that blocked the streets. He watched the soldiers shred coils of fallen wood into dust. When looking up, he saw for the first time that most of the trees had lost their branches. Those that remained were solid and strong. Over the years his strides had also grown stronger, taking him faster and farther; but today, he looked up and noticed -- he was alone.
THE END