/lit/ - Literature

>>10110623
I remember what it was like, how I learned the nature of Beech leaves. I remember going for walks with my father, through the cold grey New England winters. 2015, 2016, yes those seemed especially grey to me, when he would drag me outside for my own good, when I was in withdrawal. My legs would not listen to me. I fell forward onto them through the sleeping forest as if I were on stilts, up the rooted paths towards the water. My thoughts were not my own. My body, burning and crumbling, no longer heard my cries.

What makes the North American Beech Tree distinct is that it comes from the tropics. Long ago these giants wandered into a foreign land, gradually northwards into the cold from warmer climes. Finding themselves in the snow so suddenly, they were forced to adapt, to survive. Unlike the maple or oak with their dark skins and ridged texture to evenly dissipate heat and prevent damage, the Beech is smooth, flat, and light. This is to radiate evenly and escape deadly frost cracks from forming in the heat of New England's low winter sun, that lazy egg yolk in the sky. Though their skin color may be different now, they have maintained their authentic face.

The Beech comes from a land where there is no winter, where leaves may live year round without a care in the world, gathering energy for years on end. Down there they always full, they are always green. No such thing exists in New England, not for these stranded giants. No, their leaves shrivel into pale white nothings.

However fragile they refuse to die, turned downwards on their stems like paper quaking in the wind they are a sore sight indeed. However feeble, the Beech leaf holds a quiet strength. It never lets go, it holds on because in the tropics, because in spring, the leaves do not let go. It refuse to die because it remembers what once was, because it knows what again will be. I remember being in withdrawal, what it means to be paper thin, to flail in the wind and hang pale above the icy ground. I remember how I learned the nature of Beech leaves , how I smiled at them as I trudged on quietly through the snow.