final assignment: The Old Me

The soft breeze softly touched my skin. Ugh… don’t grimace at me like that! Don’t you know that even a tree like me has skin too? Oh, you skipped the biology classes again, didn’t you? Ok, maybe it didn’t look like skin, too ragged, hey, I was old! I realized that yesterday, when I found that I was bigger than most trees surrounding me, and taller. You know how to measure a tree’s age right? With the rings in its log, no? you definitely has to repeat your biology class.
I had seen many things in my long life. What do you want to know? Blue-blooded family scandals? A duke with his mistresses? The beautiful rich girl who met her lover on my root? Or when people crazy about Elvis? The Beatles? And now what you called it? Red Hot Chili Peppers? That’s a ridiculous name, you know. Hearing all their songs made me dizzy, and that, made my leaves fell fast. I really prefer when people had picnic around me, within my shadow, listening to Beethoven, Batch, or something like that. The children ran around me, trying to climb up my branches while their parents discussing about the family future. Oh, how I wished to see those moments again.
I had seen the World War I in 1914 until 1918, the government frantically learned to mobilize and control the industrial societies. That was when this climate condition began. The global warming issue began in 1930s. People were afraid of the ice ages that were threatening to come. The ice in the Antarctic began to melt, they said.
Frankly enough, now, almost eight decades after that, the ice ages have never come. They said not yet anyway. But with approximately 1,6 billion people live in this earth, I know someday it will come. In my height, it is more difficult to breath from time to time. Oh no! you are questioning me again whether I breath, aren’t you? Of course I do, like every living creature in this world, I do need oxygen.
From my aging body, I could see the sun shines every morning on the east horizon. The green emerald had disappeared anyway. Now the shine fell to the dry ground, to the sky scrapers, trough the smoke of industrial waste.
With this old earth, I’m waiting for my own time to come. To when the termite has filled me to the bone. And I fell down with all of the glory I had known.

narrative text
pratama lysa H.
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