Blackout Beach - "Sending Postcards to a Ghost (BT)"

In the dark woods we walked toward the grove where Henry was going to eat a tree. He was 13 now and that was the year you ate a tree. The tree that had been planted at his birth, right next to Lily's and mine and little Benjamin's, looked strong in the moonlight. Mother told the story of the prophet eating a tree as an example of human's integration with nature: It is our best friend, it is our hardest enemy, it is our provider and our murderer, it is merely the hallway we pass through and yet it is all we ever see. And Henry ate. He tore pieces off, they ripped easily in his strong young hands, it often looked like he was peeling bread. He looked off, at nothing, while he chewed and sucked on the wood chips. It needed to be done very slowly. The chip needed to be saturated enough in the mouth that it could be plied apart with the tongue, that's what Father said, then he could swallow. We left him there that night and the walk back seemed like we had given up on searching for him, like Henry was lost and that we just hoped he would come back on his own. That night in bed I watched the wax form a puddle on the desk and thought if Henry survives I will give him my bicycle because he looked so sad when his broke on the rock. I didn't want to swing my head down to look at his empty bunk, it seemed like I would see something I didn't want to see.

Inside, there was plumbing, crackers, lanterns and a fishing rod. And out there, Henry ate a whole tree.

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