The Singing Trees

by Boo Walker

One of the many lessons that Walt had taught Annalisa about time was that not all seconds were equal. Some lasted longer than others. The following seconds inched by as if they were waiting on a seed to sprout.

Love wasn’t a potion you drank to distract yourself from reality. Love was the key to living a life that mattered.

“Life’s just too short, isn’t it? Forget all the things that could go wrong. I’d rather get them all wrong with you than all right without you.”

Love could hold you under the water with its grip clutching your neck, your body convulsing into lifelessness, or it could sweep you up and away into an explosion of joy. Love could be a ravenous and passionate need for another human, like she’d felt for Thomas, or it could be equally powerful in that unwavering way that she felt for Celia.

He took her hand and put the pocket watch in her palm, closing it. “There was a time after Gertrude died, before you walked into my shop, when I thought my time was up. It’s funny. You fix timepieces all your life, and you become one with them, one tick after another. Your whole life abides by the hands swinging around. But then you showed up and everything changed. I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but you gave the horologist more time. You gave me a reason to live. When you hold this watch from now on, remember that you have the ability to turn back time. Not many are able to do that.”

She’d decided that nothing about life was easy, and sometimes it gets the best of us. No matter what, it wasn’t worth holding on to anger.

The more people you loved, the more goodbyes you had to endure. And yet Annalisa realized in the hours after losing Walt that all the pain that came with loving was absolutely worth it. What was the point of living if you spent it in fear? What was the point of life without love? She