On Lemon Trees and Metaphor

I was thinking, the other day, of the sun and how it used to arrive through the lemon tree when I was a child, carefully, as if it didn’t want to disturb anything. I can almost smell the leaves now, that unforgivable freshness. I used to steal them from the big branches, and the tree was so forgiving, allowing me to tear the smallest ones and crush them in my tiny hands, releasing that sharp, living scent. I almost wept remembering it, because my body remembers what my mind is still trying to understand.

That lemon tree was not just part of my childhood; it was its spine. It stood there while everything else moved, watching us grow, watching us drift, holding the seasons without complaint. It sheltered the bees, carried the lemons, gave shade freely, the way childhood gives without asking for return. As a child, I was certain trees had feelings. That they knew we existed. That they knew themselves. And I believed, with the quiet certainty only foolishness allows, that our tree knew me. Because whenever I passed by, the scent deepened, as if it recognized my steps, as if it leaned toward me, branches softening, almost folding into a hug.

The scene was unbearably beautiful.

Sunlight slipped through the leaves, breaking the sky into small, uneven pieces. The world narrowed to light and breath. Standing there, I wasn’t rooted to the ground so much as to the moment itself. The tree proved that something could remain while everything else changed. No matter how far I went, no matter how long the summers stretched between us, it stayed quietly reminding me of what the world once felt like. It witnessed how tall we grew, how far we went and how early we learned to leave.

And then, without a ceremony, the stories thinned. Not all at once, just quietly, the way voices lower when no one is listening anymore. The tree stopped growing, not in a protest, not in grief, but in form of resignation, as if it understood something I did not yet know. The bees, once faithful, found another harbor.

Nothing ended yet everything merely moved on.

This is how loss arrives, not as an event, but as a condition. As absence slowly becoming familiar, almost harmless. The kind of loss you learn to live inside without noticing when it first took hold. The tree, like childhood, did not vanish; it withdrew. It remained where it was, but no longer waited, no longer expected my return.

Small hands, unguarded wonder, a life that hadn’t yet learned to fracture itself.

A lemon tree.

A home.

A metaphor for staying.

Forgive me—for still looking back.

Forgive me—for knowing I cannot return.