"It was the one…" by Leah-Lyuba Livshits

"It was the one…"

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE ONLY VAGUE WISPS of recollections of bright lights and the smell of luscious green. As I grew older, more details stuck in my mind, like the sound of crumpled wrapping paper and my brother’s shouts of innocent joy. Each winter, I would listen to stories about the most perfect and magical being living in a dense forest. But to me, it all seemed too fantastic and impossible - one of those myths or legends aimed to stun and amaze that my brother liked to retell. In time, though, I would learn it was all real.

I roamed the forest in search of something I only had an idea of. My body was wrapped in layers upon layers of clothing, my face left bare - a singular weakness in my cozy cocoon. As the sun set and the evening began to cloak the orange-yellow-pink sky, my cheeks were fully flushed from the cold and my lips were left chaffed from the fierce wind trying to unravel my fortress made of wool and polyester-covered goose feathers. In the distance I could hear my family calling my name; it was time to go home. Despite my protection, I could feel my feet becoming cold - it WAS time to go home. And yet, something stopped me. It was the same thing that urged me to go deeper into the small forest, to ignore my protesting feet - it was the idea of something magical.

As the sky grew a shade darker, I was ready to submit to the fact that luck was not on my side that day and that fate would not have me spend a second longer in the wintery landscape. I was ready to turn back, and it was then that I saw it. It stood a few feet away from me hidden behind some of its taller and slightly inferior brethren - I gazed at it and I swear it gazed back. It was perfect; as if one of those siren-folk my brother told me about plucked the image straight from my innermost thoughts. Its ancient song thrummed through the ground and nothing could have forced my feet to walk the other way, towards my family, towards safety. I stood there enthralled by its spell.

How can I describe perfection? As I inhaled, its scent poured down my throat and it was as if my heart was set aflame, pumping hot liquid gold through every vein in my body till the warmth could not be contained and spilled over from every pore. It smelt as if there was a whole forest of pine-trees bound inside its wooden shell. Its leaves were as sharp as the icy air piercing my lungs with every intake of breath. Several snow-covered pinecones dotted the frame and could be found scattered under the lowest of its branches. Perhaps, a code of some kind lay hidden in the designs, waiting to be deciphered one day. And perhaps, the pattern, in fact, held the enchantment that drew me to this magical being in the first place. I stood frozen in its presence for what seemed like hours but what was something more like minutes. It was a myth come alive, it was perfect.

And suddenly, I felt an insatiable desire to possess grow in me. Like a dragon bewitched by gold sickness, I felt the need to cut it from its roots and take it home with me. To put it into its stand and ordain it with precious baubles and colorful trinkets. To wrap it with bright lights that blinked and shimmered in mesmerizing sequences of flashes. To lay prized possessions by its feet and to crown its head with a star worthy of its beauty. I called out to my soon-to-be-icicles family; I had made my decision.

Unfortunately, the dream could not last. Every day I watered my treasure and every day more of its dried leaves fell to the floor of my apartment. Every day it lost more of its natural green color and every day more of its fragrance dulled till it smelt of nothing reminiscent of that pine forest. And then, the day finally came when all winter related holidays had passed and there could be no more denying that all that was left of my perfect being was a withering corpse barley held upright by its plastic and steel stand.

We carried the tree down to the street and tried to prop it up against the fence by the bins, only for it to fall on the ground, rebelling against our efforts to keep up the illusion of it still being alive. It wasn’t alive, it was dead. And as it lay there, I realized something important, or rather something that would stay and haunt me forever: no longer was my prized hoard the embodiment of the magical tales I was regaled with when I was little, instead, it had become a crude caricature and a gruesome symbol of my selfishness. I wanted to cry out, to scream at myself and at my actions, to tell the people around me to wake up, to consider the bodies lying in the streets all alone, some dead already, others dying surrounded by the unfeeling alien world of concrete and stone. In the end, I didn’t do any of that. I spared one last glance at the corpse by my feet, and as I walked away, one thought silenced all others - my selfish justification - it was the one...

Photo by L.L.L