Along the river walk I came upon a tree with some bark mi...

Along the river walk I came upon a tree with some bark missing.
In the bare spot, someone had written a message.
And the message was then scratched out.
It looked like the scratching out was done
by the same hand that had written the message.

I've been analyzing the scratchings, 
attempting to reconstruct the original message.
There seems to be date, a signature, and two exclamation marks
that are the most discernible. Little else of the message 
can be known for sure, but given the number of words
and their placement, the note seems to follow the pattern
of other public scrawls that are professions of love.

It would be interesting to know the story behind all of this.
How someone was moved to mark a public place with passionate words
and then, with equal passion, scribble through them with so much force.
Was the change of heart in the moment
or did the author return sometime much later with a broken heart?
If they did return later, they took the trouble of using the same writing implement.
Most likely, their about face was close to the original action of putting pen to tree,
which is even more mysterious.

It's telling that such a tormented message is in a place of injury to the tree.
It provides a visual metaphor for what the people involved were going through.
Now it's on casual display and most people pass it by without noticing.
But as the tree clearly shows, time has not healed all wounds.