One day after school Kayleigh and Henry were sitting near the weeping willow in their front yard. Kayleigh sprawled out, just outside the hanging branches, soaking up every ounce of the sun. Henry stayed seated inside the tree, encompassed by its drooping branches. Neither of them had said anything for a little while, but this was normal. It was strange how far the two had drifted apart; they just assumed it was normal to as you got older. Kayleigh had only just begun middle school, where Henry had just entered his freshman year. The two had become the polar opposite of the other throughout the years. However, they still managed to get along.


“I don’t want to play, Kayleigh,” Henry told her as she tried with all her might to stand him up.


“But the sun’s only going to shine bright for the next few weeks! Soon enough we won’t ever want to be outside…it will become too cold."


“I don’t feel well. Just let me lay, here.”


“Please please pleaaseee,” Kayleigh begged, “come play with me!”


“I don’t want to play right now. Like you said I won’t be able to soon enough so we should just get used to that, now.”


“Mom always says ‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’”


“Kayleigh please stop. I’m not going to change my mind. Just allow me to take in everything around me before it’s gone.”


“Okay…,” she said glumly. She decided not to argue.


The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Henry’s eyes traveled around, Kayleigh glanced up and could tell he was thinking about something. She sat patiently, waiting for him to break the silence between them. A few minutes later when he still hadn’t said anything, she spoke up.


“The leaves are beginning to fall,” she said.


“…strand by strand. The trees are going to be completely bald soon.”


“They will still look pretty. There’s a different beauty that surfaces when they lose their leaves.”


“I used to think that, but now I just feel bad. They look cold, lonely.”


Kayleigh giggled as she responded, “well we could always wrap a blanket up around them.”


This made Henry smile, a mannerism that didn’t surface very often anymore. Kayleigh ran inside to pick a blanket out. She grabbed one of Henry’s favorites off the shelf, and placed it at the bottom of the tree’s trunk.


“It’s like me and my hat,” Henry laughed back when he saw the sight, “it’s always there covering my head.”


Their ears perked up as their mom called from the kitchen, “Come clean up for dinner!”


Kayleigh walked over to Henry, helping him stand up. He paused at the door, pivoting to look back at the weeping willow. Peering through the hanging branches, he smiled at the blanket covering the trunk.


The next spring, the willow didn’t bloom. It never did bloom again, and Kayleigh refused to ever take that blanket from the trunk. For it was a symbol, a meaning nobody else could understand.