Tomorrow by the side, yesterday over the road

In a moment of what seemed just like a usual day, she stood there next the tree next to the road. The tree was large, huge in fact, and its roots had distorted the concrete beneath her. Its very source of life had destroyed the concrete and made all man made structures look weak and pointless. Yet she stood there with her arm out with a small boy holding it. The boy epitomised the term ignorance is bliss. He looked up at the big tree and was in awe of its size, not knowing what damage had been done beneath. The branches looked alive in the wind and though bear with the season it looked more human than it had in any month of any year. He just looked and began to feel confused to whether the tree was more alive than the woman he was with for she had no expression and was motionless. Her stance was regular. She held the boy's hand in one and the pushchair in the other. Her face was terrible. It wreaked of misery yet it looked plain with no expression. It was as if the tears of previous days had scarred her face with terminal sadness.

She didn't look at the boy at all. She didn't look ahead at the man approaching her. She just looked over the road. She was still and made no body movement or change of facial expression. She was fixated on the building that was across the road. The building had no natural beauty whatsoever. It was just a plain building but it was what was inside the building that trapped her. She looked at the large pieces of stone with carvings that were behind the buildings large and revealing windows. The carvings said 'forever loved' or 'a wonderful husband, father and brother'. The words, though sympathetic, burnt her. Every letter was as bad as the next only because it had relevance to her current situation. She knew one of these stones would be squeezed in the earth in the coming days, but she didn't believe it was the correct way to say goodbye. She believed that something as cold and bleak as stone was disgustingly ironic for its purpose. And though she would constantly change the flowers and make sure some life was there, people would be more interested on what was said on that stone.

The man walking down the road was now very close to her. It was only when he was a few feet away she sort of snapped back into reality and said to the boy 'look at how big this tree is'. The boy was happy she had the same opinion as him and now they both went to the tree to see how hard its bark was. She showed enthusiasm for the boy and he was loving it with questions on how old it could be. She simply replied 'very old' or 'older than me', this made the boy chuckle and she would tap him on the back of the head because of his playful cheekiness.

They stayed by the tree for a couple of minutes and carried on up the road with the boy in one hand and the pushchair in the other. She would keep talking to the boy to keep him amused but the boy was too young to understand the pain behind her kind words. How when he spoke she would barely listen with her mind elsewhere. Her mouth would smile to him but her eyes would scream for yesterday to be back.