The {sad} Giving Tree

For my kindergarten play, I was a tree.
Before you laugh at the short girl with messy hair given the mute role
let me say,
it was the giving tree.
And I? I was the main part.
I balanced on milk cartons with the
brown paper that lines preschool hallways
cascading off my back.
And I stood under a canopy of leaves
that weren’t really mine and
played the part.
The boy came and took what I had,
until I had no more.
But I was happy, because the tree in the story was.
But this means nothing because off the stage,
I look more like the boy sitting on a stump
that was once a tree.

But I met a girl.
I’m telling you if I ever met a giving tree - it was this girl.
She dropped her fruit, spread her leaves,
until they started to saw her branches off.
And suddenly, the sweet story of the tree who gave everything to the boy
doesn’t seem so sweet anymore.
Because the stump at the end of the story was happy,
but you?
I don’t think you are.
And I guess the reason I’m saying all this is,
forget shel silverstein.
forget the boy and the tree
You don’t have to be a stump.
Let’s reinvent a story where giving,
doesn’t mean losing it all too.