Their hands are flattened on the bark of the jacaranda tree in front of their house. Sara has waited all year for the tree to bloom, but now that it has, she’s disturbed by a brief vision, a shroud of purple petals on the ground.
George and Sara begin their nightly journey, crossing at Rose Street.
“A rose is a rose is a rose,” Sara says. George answers with a fake laugh, imitating the staccato of machine gun fire as Sara joins him.
“We’ve grown peculiar together,” she says, “unfit for anyone’s company but each other’s.”
“For better or worse, we’re just testing the limits,” George answers.
“We never said that for better or worse stuff. Don’t you remember our vows? Something, something, eternal love.”
“I thought the for better or worse part was understood.”
They practice the burst-pulsed sounds of dolphins as Sara imagines them shedding their human masks together. After crossing the intersection at Sunset they join hands. The roots of a sycamore tree have caused the sidewalk to buckle and they worry about stumbling. George’s bad knee, Sara’s bad hip, the consequences of falling are greater now.
Sara wonders if they should cut the walk short. The midsummer evening that seemed so long when they began has grown much shorter, and she doesn’t want to pass the house on Warren Street in the dark.
“You don’t really think it’s haunted, do you?” she asks.
“Only deep in my bones,” says George, “but we have to finish. Rules are rules.”
When they pass the vacant lot, they remember the time they saw a shirtless man carrying an ax emerge onto the sidewalk. Neither of them had mentioned it for several blocks although they’d crossed the street by silent agreement.
“I was so startled,” Sara says. “Great story though.” She laughs again, but George doesn’t join in. “Is your knee bothering you?” she asks, but he’s gone silent.
Crossing in front of the Warren Street house, Sara hears again the squealing brakes, the thud before the world goes black. The stars have gone out, but a hand finds hers in the darkness, the calloused fingers familiar and comforting.
When the dim, late evening light returns, Sara doesn’t bother to look for a car, or tire marks, or anything else she knows isn’t there. It’s cold now, and dark. She hurries toward home, a woman alone. From a block away, the bare branches of the jacaranda beckon. She stretches her arms forward, anticipates the feel of bark beneath her fingers.
“I miss you every day, George,” she says, touching the tree. The complicated root system extends as far below ground as the branches tower above, seeking the roots of all the trees in the neighborhood. Sarah’s sorrow is a pain in her chest, a weakness in her legs, but she wills herself to stand and wishes. as she does every night, that she and George could become trees, connected until the end of the world.
About the author:
Ellen Romano is a retired educator and beekeeper living in Hayward, California where she enjoys frequent visits with her children and grandchildren. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize, Ink Nest Poem of the Month, and several awards from the Ina Coolbrith Circle. Other work has appeared in, Lascaux Review, Deadlands, Naugatuck River Review, and other publications.
Part of our Halloween 2025 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through October 31, 2025.
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