Living at the edge of a field in a human's backyard means you get a lot more sun than most trees. All the trees by me are densely clumped together in this forest, but I exist on the very edge of these woods. Over time my roots have extended far out beneath me, widening and protruding from the ground, making little knots which mice and other little critters like to burrow under. My branches reach so high I can see tops of the thousands of trees behind me, and the sharp angular roofs of all the human homes lined up in rows in front of me. I always thought humans were more curious than most animals. Especially one boy that once lived in the house closest to me.

Kevin always seemed to hurt himself. When he was three years old, he broke his arm. It was the first time he ever tried to climb me on his own. I remember the feeling of his soft fleshy palms wrapping around my lowest hanging branch. They were damp with oily summer sweat. He lifted his feet off the ground and I could feel the weight of him as the branch sunk slightly. He brought his feet back to the ground, but the idea was blossoming in his mind. He grabbed my branch again, this time with a tighter grip. One hand was on either side of the branch, his delicate clawless, talon-less palms pressing against my coarse unyielding exterior. He hoisted his feet up in the air, swung his leg up around the branch, and then did the same with the other leg. Once he had gotten himself safely on my branch balancing was a challenge that proved to be too much for him. Before he could stand all the way up and reach out for another branch I felt the rubber soles of his little sneakers scrape against that low-hanging branch, as gravity took ahold of him.

I could feel the thud on top of my roots as the left side of his body hit the grass. For a moment he lay there, still. His mother, who had been sitting on the back porch reading, looked up.

"Kevin? Is everything alright?"

The boy replied in a long wail that turned into a howl with his second breath. He rolled onto his back, clutched his elbow and let out another high pitched moan. His mother dropped her book and raced over to him where he was now rocking back and forth on the ground, sobbing in pain. His feet were raised off the ground kicking violently like a nervous bird flapping its wings.

His mother sunk to the grass in front of him. "Honey! What happened?"

"M-my armmm!" the boy blubbered. Tears were leaking down the sides of his now bright pink face.

"Here sweetie, let me take a look at it." She reached for his left elbow but he sharply turned away.

"Nooooooo! It hurrrts!" He said among a continuous thread of sobs.

"Kevin, you have to let me see it." The child continued to cry loudly, but lifted his arm up. She gently pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, which prompted a loud squeal from the boy. His thin fleshy arm had already begun to swell in size. She scooped the child, whose flailing calmed down the moment he was in her arms, and brought him inside.

I wondered about that sensation of pain. I presumed it was something similar to how it felt when the boy's father built that platform on me a few years later. He built it high up in my canopy, which reaches farther than any other tree nearby. Apparently the platform was supposed to be a full tree house but the job was so tiresome that the man decided to stop once he had put the floor together.

I felt each nail Alan drove through my bark. I knew that cold pieces of metal were being pounded into me with each whack of his hammer. And there were also the thick horseshoe sized metal staples that impaled my trunk every foot and a half to serve as a ladder. I felt it every time Kevin grabbed one of those thick metal handlebars to climb up my trunk. And I could feel the sharp edges of the boards digging into my bark from his weight on the platform. But there's nothing for me to do about it. I don't make a sound. I don't flail. I do not shriek. I do not cry. I'm not meant to. What would that accomplish? What would be the benefit of all that chaos?

As the boy grew taller and lankier he would often leave the house and climb up to the platform. Sometimes it was shortly after I'd heard him and his parent shouting from inside the house. He'd burst out the door in a fit of rage, clutching a little journal he angrily scribbled things into once he was safely up in my branches. The platform was positioned in a space where you could see the stars perfectly on a clear night, dusted across the sky, flickering and dancing their brilliant dance. Some nights he’d sneak out of his room, climb up with a blanket and an astronomy book and just stare at the stars. Eventually he started bringing a large telescope up to the platform. I wondered how he was possibly able to carry the contraption. It was wider than some of my branches, certainly wider than any of his limbs. And with both him and the telescope it felt like the weight of two people on the platform at any given moment.

One night in particular he climbed up very late hoping to see a certain comet. When he first set up the telescope the must comet was nowhere in sight. Kevin began to get antsy wailing for the comet. This was dearly something very important to him. He paced back and forth on the platform and then rushed back to the telescope to see if there was any change in the sky. He heaved a dramatic sigh each time there was nothing new and went back to pacing, muttering things to himself.

Eventually he peered into the telescope and above me I could see the comet, a bright star emerging from the horizon against the deep velvet blue sky. But this was no ordinary star. It grew brighter and larger with each moment, and it did not travel with the pattern of the sky. No, this star was moving fast. Light trailed behind it like some sort of dusty echo. I remembered seeing a star like this before very long ago, when I was just a sapling. It was no wonder Kevin was so anxious to see it. Stars like this crossed the sky once in a lifetime. He stood there peering into the telescope in absolute wonder.

"Holy shit. That's awesome," he whispered.

As the comet climbed across the sky, Kevin inched the telescope further and further back on the platform. Every now and then he paused, looked away to scribbled down something in his journal. But he always returned back to that position, hunched over the telescope.

The whole thing happened so incredibly fast. He took another step backwards, not realizing his foot was halfway off the platform. He reached for something sturdy to grab and knocked the telescope over. The next thing I know the telescope is toppling over and he's falling through my branches.

I felt his body slipping through me, snapping off twigs and leaves. I felt his body breaking as they hit my stronger wide limbs. And I felt it when he finally hit the ground. But this was not just a thud like when he broke his arm. I felt the bones crack inside his fleshy casing. I felt his spine snap as it landed directly on one of my protruding roots. And a split second later the telescope land on top of his chest. I heard another crunch inside him. When it hit the platform it must've broken off the tripod and rolled off the edge.

His right foot was twisted backward. Bone protruded from his right arm. This time, he did not move. He did not finch. He made no sound. No crying, screaming, no rocking back and forth in pain. He just lay there all sprawled out. His eyelids were wide open staring at nothing. I'd never seen a human so still. But he was still alive, just barely. I could feel his heart beating, and his wheezy gasps of breath.

He was in unspeakable pain and I knew it. I could feel it. I could feel where my root had split him open just underneath his neck. I could feel his meaty insides bruised and punctured and filling with blood. I could feel his right arm leaking out onto the soil. I could feel him encased in that broken and bleeding sack of skin. He was so delicate and soft. So fragile. This wasn't like any sensation that I had ever felt. I'd never had any idea of what it was like not to be solid and unyielding. I had not known how insufferable pain could actually be. I was scared for him. And he was scared for himself.

He was terrified because he knew no one would come. His parents were still fast asleep inside. No one would find him for hours. He was going to die out here all alone. I could sense him going into a panic in his head. He'd never been so trapped inside himself. He was thrashing wildly on the inside trying to make himself move, trying to withstand the unfathomable pain that seared like wildfire through every inch of his body.

In that moment, I would've traded my life to be human. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to hold his delicate frame close to my soft warm body. I wanted to scoop him up into my arms like his mother had and carry him to safety. I wanted to whisper to him that everything would be alright. I wanted to throw away everything I've ever known about what I am.

I noticed that my lowest hanging branch, the one he first fell off just a few years ago, was reaching farther downward than usual. Only a few feet off the ground. I extended it like an arm. And it moved, not at the mercy of the wind or gravity, but of my own will. I reached out and touched his face. My leaves gently stroked his cheek. His frenzy of fear was replaced with confusion, which gave way to a slight feeling of relief. He understood he wasn't alone.

A few hours passed, and his heartbeat began to slow. I was still touching him tenderly, vowing to stay with him. He had settled into a calmness. By now his body was numb and he had lost a lot of blood. When his heart finally stopped my branch froze, static once more.