in responce to Walt Whitman's "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"

[_babyjesus]

I used to think a tree kept its branches and leaves around for company as long as it could; kept them there even though they were dying just so it'd have some audience; kept them because it was harder to give them up than to see them sick and weak, because sick and weak is better than alone. And I used to think the leaves and branches, being what they were in the winter, were ready to drop, ready to fall away, because it was too hard hanging on, too hard and too cold and too sad. But if you think about a tree in winter, if you think about its dying leaves turning red, brown, dry, if you think so hard about it that you can actually see it, then you'll realize that a tree like that would just as soon chew its own branch off, just as soon kill a piece of itself, rather than be reminded all the time that death exists, be reminded all the time just how alone it really is.

Narrator referring to a lone tree in the middle of a trailer park.
Hannah Pittard. "There is No Real Name for Where We Live". McSweeney's. Issue 16.