Some of the trees didn’t behave—they ripped up the streets and stretched the sidewalks in precarious ways. And the trees that didn’t follow the rules found themselves covered in children who perched on all their branches wearing bloomers and tiny black boots and bows in their hair. The children whispered to one another, pretending they were on pirate ships and that there were vicious sharks below. And they clung to the branches of the trees as if for safety, as though the trees were their mothers. And the trees could not help but be domesticated, and found themselves longing for children in
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