My best friend

by Solomon Valore-Caplan 

Age 11

It wasn’t very big. Or fancy. Just special. It had a tree planted when I was born. It had memories. Memories of my life. Of my friends. Of my birthdays. It knew me as well as I knew it. Every branch. Every blade of grass. Every flower. It was my place. I would lie there sometimes. Lie there and think. Think about many things. Fantasizing. Fantasizing about possibilities, and probabilities. About Life. About Ninjas. About anything that came to mind. I would write poems there. Some would last for a while on slips of paper. Others dissapeared quickly. As quickly as they were thought of. Thought of by me.

My brother was born. He had a tree too. Winter would come. It would coat our trees with snow. We had snowball fights there. I remember my place. I remember it well. I remember it as a best friend. A best friend just as much as my people friends. My friends that could talk. That could talk with voices. Real voices. Icould talk with my place. It was just different. That’s because it was my backyard.

Then we moved. Our trees were torn down by bulldozers. My best friend dissapeared. Dissapeared, yes, but not forever. In fact, whenever I go to my friend’s house. My person friend’s house. I look over and say. “Hello again, Old friend”.