The Tree Dream

By Nick Bythrow

Cascading myself into the sea was the easiest route I could have taken. To have the wind whip against my cheeks, invisible razorblades cutting at my falling body. To feel the hard, drum-like beating against my chest as though a bat taking flight had lodged itself between my ribcage. The salt of the sea dozens of approaching feet below, splashing up in white-specked waves of frustration and anger. My eyes would have caught a vision of this dark blue frothing. It was a short but sweet event, an initiation of some kind that didn't truly need to happen, but would for the sake of my personal sanity. I would never again need to worry and wonder and fear, for the sea would swallow me into its abyssal gorge and free me from my nightmare.

...To think I speak of it as if this had been my end. For there were to be many more trials beyond those waves. One of which I see, even today, cresting over the horizon, a violet hue shining in the gloom. I ask, now, how everything in my chest became the swirling torrent it is today. The answer is always the same: It was under the Tree where it all became known.

It started the night I went to heaven.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B088N64HGB
• ISBN13: 9798645759582
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"