Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

“And did you know that trees can feel pain?” you asked. “No,” I said. But I wasn’t surprised. I had suspected as much ever since Dad told us that the maple tree outside our bedroom window was nearly dead. It was so old, Dad said, it might have been planted by an actual Puritan, a fact that did not impress me as much as it scared me. The tree sat on our lawn, hunched and tangled, and I didn’t like looking at it the way I didn’t like seeing the bone spurs on Dad’s feet when he took his socks off at the beach. Or the bottom row of yellow teeth that were only visible when Mom laughed really hard. It was death, I knew, waiting in the most unexpected places—inside Mom’s laughter, at the end of Dad’s toes, in the bright green leaves outside our bedroom window that couldn’t have looked more alive.