I’m not sure if you know this, because I didn’t entirely know it myself until I wrote this down, but there is a very nice tree. I think it’s a weeping willow. It lives behind Green Library. I suppose it always has. 

And it spoke to me. It spoke to me of you. Because like me it has been watching you all this time as you pass by it blindly. I suppose there is quite a bit I pass by blindly too. 

In speaking to it, I found there was much I didn’t know about you, much I didn’t understand. I thought I knew it all. I thought watching was knowing; I didn’t know the dirt below my feet. I didn’t know these roots at my toes. 

It told me how you often loiter before class, because you are always a few minutes too early. I do this too. The tree knows that well. Is this wasted time? I’m not too sure. I’ve gotten to know this tree like a good friend in this time. Is that all a waste? I suppose I can’t be the judge. 

When I’m with this tree, I listen to my mother’s whispers. Somehow, this tree knows her too. I’m sure they’ve never met. But I suppose they were born of the same seed. How else could they be so close?

The tree told me you speak to your mother too, but on the phone. You tell her of late nights and early mornings. You tell her of arguments and pain. You pour your stresses out to her so she can receive them. So she can bury them in the sand. And she always does. 

Now, I would love to ask you about this tree. But I’m scared you wouldn’t know what to say. I’m scared you’ll find it odd that the tree and I have been speaking all this time as you’ve been passing it by. I suppose I’ll never know if I don’t ask. 

Isn’t that true of it all? 

I told the tree my plan. I’ll wait by the tree, past when my class is over, past when I normally leave its embrace. There, I will wait for you. The tree will know what to do from there. I think it knows things I could never know. 

Until then, I told the tree to keep watching you, just like I do. Watching and waiting. Watching and waiting. The time will come. The tree and me and you: it’ll come. We must wait, like our patient mothers, like our patient trees.