There was a tree that let me be a king—
the highest branch my throne, the sky my kingdom,
and from up there the neighborhood was miniature,
the adults small and robbed of their dominion.

I went there when I needed to be larger,
when the ground-level world felt too confining—
the tree gave me the altitude of perspective,
the view that comes from difficult climbing.

I still need my metaphorical tree—
the high place where the world looks small and ordered,
where I can breathe above the ordinary,
where perspective can be recovered and recorded.
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