We went to the park where we used to play back in the day when we were small; we would run ahead of the parents and hide in the hollow trees that littered the way, brown and green side by side, growing even after they had been torn apart, their bark exposed on the insides. We would snuggle into their crevices like an embrace, an abandoned nest.
They have been stripped one by one of their lives and their family ties, they have slipped away and we stand around the outsides of the family tree without a centre, with a hollow core, never having learned to lean in.
We went back, and the trees still live against the odds, against all appearances they thrive, hollow to the core but reaching for the skies, centuries in the making and strong with age and the tempering of time, a living lesson in endurance.
Do they remember us? Do they remember those we walked with before?