• I was wistfully walking through the woods, admiring the calm and quiet that was only occasionally interrupted by the songbird’s song. With a notebook in hand, I waited by the tree which has become so familiar to me – through these ten years in which we have known each other, the tree still stands and I still exist. I took a seat at the foot of the tree and removed a black pen from my handbag and opened my notebook, sitting in contemplation wondering what I should write while I waited for him to arrive.

    “Take a deep breath..”

    As I sat pondering by the tree, I could have sworn I heard these words spoken to me. Did these words exist solely in my subconscious, were they muttered by a nearby being, or did they lie on the wind? I quickly stood up and took a look around me. My eyes scanned the vicinity, but I neither heard nor saw anything out of place or out of the ordinary – the forest was still tranquil and the birds were still singing.

    “Could it be that he has finally come?” I quietly asked myself in my disbelief. After five years of waiting, has he finally answered my calls?

    In the depth of my meditation, a strong wind blew violently past me as if the creator of the wind were trying to knock me down. It was a sunny, spring day, and there was not a cloud in the sky. This wind only made me feel in my current situation all the more bewildered.

    That voice. I was now positive that it did not merely exist in my subconscious, for I heard it again.

    “..come for you..”

    My childhood friend, Danny, spoke these exact words to me five years ago. It was August 4, 2003, and Danny and I were supposed to meet by this tree to say our final goodbyes. Danny told me he was going to leave on August 5th because he was going to move into the city to live with his older brother, and though neither of us wanted to live our lives without each other, we knew we had no choice.

    “When we are old enough to be together on our own, I will come for you,” he told me softly. “You and I can travel to the most exciting places in the world, so I could take the most breathtaking of pictures, and you can write the most breathtaking of stories!”

    For twelve-year-olds, we had already dreamt of the amazing possibilities of our future lives together, and we were not going to let these few years of separation get in the way of our dreams.

    Danny left as he said he would on August 5th, but I forgot to ask him when exactly we would be able to live together on our own. I had no way to contact him, for I, being the naïve 12-year-old as I was, forgot to ask him to where he would be moving. “The city.” What city was he speaking of? When we are old enough to be on our own, will he remember to come back for me?

    Three years passed since the day he left, and I still had no word from him. I took frequent trips back to that spot by the tree where we said our goodbyes to wait for him, but since it had been so long since we had seen each other and I had no idea if he would ever come back, I started to use my time waiting for him by the tree to write fictional stories in solitude. Danny and I both had our dreams, and my stories were often inspired by our dreams. I remember writing about Danny’s dream of us traveling the world in our creative expression, and yes, he literally went to sleep and dreamt of this. Sometimes we are able to bring our subconscious to life.

    Liv!!

    I opened my eyes to see my friend, Catherine, standing over me with concern.

    “So this is where you were!,” she said while smiling in relief. “You haven’t come to this tree for three weeks. I thought you said you’ve gotten over him.”

    “I thought I did, too, but now I know I was only lying to myself.” I could not hold them back. Tears started to flood my eyes, and before I knew it, my breathing became erratic and my face soaked in loneliness.

    “Someday, you’ll just have to let go!” Catherine said in consolation. “It’s been two years since you found out.. about him. He wouldn’t want to see you cry like this.”

    “We were supposed to see the world together,” I muttered through my tears. “He’ll come. He told me he’d come!”

    “Liv, you were dreaming,” said Catherine.

    “I couldn’t have been dreaming! I just heard him!”

    “But, you just woke up. You had to be dreaming.”

    “I.. woke up.”

    “Yes.”

    “I..I.. then I wish I’d never wake up,” I screamed. “In my dreams is the only place where he is bursting with life! He’s alive! He’s alive!”

    Danny died two years ago from brain cancer. Two years ago, I saw his brother in town and became ecstatic. If his brother were here, Danny must have also been here. I ran up to him and was confused by the obvious sorrow expressed on his face. He told me of Danny’s passing and I fell to my knees in shock. Our dreams, our plans -- they were lost.

    Today, I can only dream of our dreams. I will keep reliving our times together until he finally comes for me. I will wait for him until the birds sing their sweetest of songs.