A Place We've Forgotten

I've always loved trees. Big, towering, ancient trees that seem like they've been here forever. Being a dendrophile-a person who loves giant trees-is a perfect description of me. There's something about their enormity that makes me feel small, and safe, and like the world is not entirely cruel.

I was nineteen when I found a tree that made me feel that way more than any other. Its trunk was wider than a room. Its roots twisted across the ground like veins. And beneath it was a wooden bench, worn, waiting, as if it had been made for someone like me.

I went there to breathe. To disappear. To feel quiet.

And that's when I met him-Arthur Matthew.

Arthur was twenty. Half Filipino, half Australian. Gentle, mysterious, poetic. And he smelled faintly of smoke. He didn't ask questions. He didn't demand my attention. He just stayed. Quiet. Observant. Like he understood things I hadn't yet admitted to myself.

I didn't go looking for love. I went looking for silence.

But love doesn't always wait politely.

And sometimes, it arrives too late, or leaves too early.

This is the story of how I fell for him. How I let him see me when no one else could. How I learned to trust, and how that trust broke me in ways I didn't know were possible.