The rays of morning always hit like a truck, bright and heavy. Mornings may feel like beginnings, but what beginning is there for a being who has always seen the end of things?

The birds chirped in my branches. I could feel the ground to which I was tethered shake with the movement of wheels and vehicles. But as the wind fluttered through my leaves, I smiled (yes, trees do smile); the wind was an old friend of mine, perhaps even older than me.

“Hello,” said the wind, its voice still as whispery and silvery as the day I first heard it.

“Any news?” I said, smiling. I asked every day and got no answer.

“None, unfortunately,” the wind said. Even I could feel the pity in it. It blew away.

The cars started rumbling past. My friends had long been chopped off, but I had still stood, perhaps as just décor, but I still stood. My eyes fell on the space beside me, and something flickered. Maybe a distant memory. Children used to come and play here, but today no one cares.

I heard the familiar turning of creaky wheels. It was the gardener. He had been here for quite a while, yet I had never seen a person less interested in his work than him. He wheeled the wheelbarrow, which had dead wood in it, over to the bin. He never glanced at me at all. He whistled and went away. I sighed. I knew it was too late to be noticed by anyone, actually. No one would want to see a helpless old tree, would they? They would prefer some festival or a cool ride instead of gazing at a motionless pile of leaves and twigs.

The cars started rumbling past. Finally!

My favourite pastime was counting cars. It was funny, maybe even questionable, but better than listening to birds talking about the latest drama in their families.

It was 7 am, and after 734 vehicles had passed, the traffic got bad. The school vans started rolling in and the traffic came to a crawl. That was when something new happened.

I saw a girl. She was sitting in her van and, unlike every human passing by, was looking at me.

Her eyes weren’t crinkled in disgust or pity. They were full of wonder. Familiarity. The wind blew through my leaves again. And she smiled. She was totally awestruck. She had a beautiful smile. I smiled too.

The day passed on with the same monotony. The sun scorched down mercilessly. I squinted in the blaze. Until I saw that van again. With the same girl. This time, she waved to me. Something in my bark rewired. I felt something I had never felt before. Hope. Love. The feeling of being noticed.

From that day, it became a ritual. I saw her friends also waving to me from time to time. But the most consistent was that girl. I heard the wind whisper with profound awe to me a week later, “She named you, too, something from her science book: Alveoli Bronchus.”

I laughed when I heard it. “Why did she name me that?”

“Because she said her teacher told her class how important these things are, and she wanted to name you something important,” the wind said, fluttering away.

So, from that day, I became someone close to a girl’s heart, someone who may be named after parts of the respiratory system, but named with the affection I had never seen.

From that day, I was Alveoli Bronchus.

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 22nd, 2026