Wednesday.

That Wednesday night was cold, just as the last three ones had been.
As Tate made his way across the park, clumsy clouds of breath billowed from his open mouth and into his wake.
It was well past sundown, and beyond even the hours of nightfolk within the park’s grounds; he walked alone and unseen, and could neither hear nor sense any other beings in the woods.
The faint screams of sirens, the ever-present rushing pulse of the city died slowly away, crowded out by the dense foliage of the sprawling grounds.
Humming to himself, and even skipping foot-to-foot here and there, the young man passed immense oaks, desolate flower beds, and streams that, in their frozen state, had fallen silent. He gradually came to a stop, and drew his long, skinny arms inside his heavy baja shirt, and glanced up at the tree before him.
Though the park was filled with the typical American hardwoods and evergreens, the plant that twisted, misshapen, from the ground before him was a relic of a strange and distant land.
The color of its bark was deep, rough as calloused armor. Still stranger was its shape- rooted slender at the base, yet curving and twisting outwards, with hardly so much as a twig sprouting to face the cluttered sky.
Tate slowly sank to the ground before the ugly, abnormal thing, and began to speak.
“I know you probably don’t want to see me again,” he said, smiling awkwardly to himself, “but I couldn’t stay away. You’re mad, I know, and I really do understand, but I can’t imagine what life would be like without you.” He cast his eyes to the ground and began to fiddle with a dry leaf. “I’ll bet you try to think about what it’d be like without me, without all the trouble I bring.” He glanced up, running green eyes over the tree’s bizarre arcs and gnarled limbs. “I know you know I never thought that this could happen. I mean, I know that I didn’t think they’d know who you were or take you out here and trap you like this, but it doesn’t get any easier. I’m still following the order, living my life without you.” His trembling fingers tore into the leaf, ripping it into a dozen vibrant shreds. He look down at his hands, and his full lips turned inwards, forming a serious line. “I love you.”
His eyes found the tree’s stretching roots and followed them until he was once again surveying the familiar plant, reexamining every crack and twist and bend he’d come to know so well over the last year.
He smiled, slow and soft, and his eyes took on the manner of a person seeing something not quite as it was, but as it could only be perceived in the finest of delusion or wisdom.
“You’re still so beautiful.”
And now, he allowed his eyes to close, and his head to fall.
He fumbled about with his hands, removing his gloves and burying his nails in the frozen dirt and digging, pressing into the earth. Without looking again at the tree, he held his breath and gave away his pulse.
Frozen as the world about him, his blood no longer aching through his veins, Tate waited; every nerve poised, ever possible fiber of attention tuned on the world outside.
And very suddenly, it all crashed in together, and someone was embracing him.
Her skin was smooth and cold as it brushed against his face and neck, and as her hair brushed his cheek, he felt knotted tangles of tresses and leaves interwoven. Her hands came to rest on the back of his neck, her cheek pressed to his, her mouth at his ear.
She spoke, and the sound was that of the wind.
She said no words, told no stories, but as her pretty nonsense met his ear, Tate’s arms tightened around her.
And then, all of a sudden, she was gone, and Tate was whispering “I love you,” tenderly into thin air.
He opened his eyes very slowly and sat back, removing his hands from the earth.
He slipped his hands back inside his gloves and sat, frigid, looking at the gnarled tree with a solemn stare.
And so Tate spent his every Wednesday, sadly courting the tree that had once been a girl.