“Get out of this house!” my mother screamed as I slammed the heavy front door. We were fighting again, about something completely irrelevant but a sickening feeling formed in the pit of my stomach and like some sort of awful poison it now seemed to be creeping through my veins. I had said the words that I knew would truly hurt her, “I hate you,” it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I tiptoed across the gravel driveway it felt like hot pieces of glass to my bare feet. The sun beat down on my back as I made the trek to a place where I knew I could calm down. A sigh escaped my chest as I stumbled onto the cool grass. And as I crossed into the shade of the ancient mulberry tree the knot of tension that had formed in my stomach loosened. It was like my own world as I ascended the ladder to my tree house. Blackbirds were singing in the tree top and it sounded almost like a water running. I reached up to pick one of the fat mulberries hanging from a low branch it tasted just the same as they had in the many summers before when I came to this same spot.

I spent most of my summers here planting a garden and now the wisteria that I’d planted years ago a twisted up the tree trunk like a snake. The smell was so pungent that it was a little overwhelming. I was slowly calming and the argument was a fading memory. In the distance I could here my mother yelling at me to come inside. I ignored her. Staring up at the wide sky, the light filtered through the leaves like some sort of earthly stained glass window.