I used to be a tree, you know. I used to grow taller and wider and stronger just a little bit every day. One of my families hung a tire swing from my bough. Another affixed a hammock to my trunk. Another still planted peonies and violets around my roots.

Children played Ring-Around-the-Rosie, arms locked and endlessly spinning around and around and around my trunk until they all fell down. Teenagers kissed and embraced one another beneath my branches. Mothers gardened beneath my boughs. Fathers read in my shade.

I was loved. I was ancient. I was alive.

But then came a blight. My leaves withered and died. They fell to the ground in piles during a hot, sultry summer. My once-strong branches splintered and cracked and as I stood, dying, someone came along and chopped me down. Hacked at my core, over and over again until I fell with a WHOOSH to the ground. They cut me to bits, there in the yard that had been my home for 150 years. There, where I witnessed children playing, lovers marrying, and widows mourning. There, where I withstood the elements, only to grow stronger in the wake of the rain, sleet, snow, hail, or frost that Mother Nature threw at me. This place was my home no more, though they left my roots behind. Sometimes I can still feel the earth nourishing my soul with its sweet soil. Sometimes I can still feel the birds, flitting to and fro among my leaves.

But I have to remind myself that that was my past life. I no longer have roots. I no longer have branches. I no longer have leaves. I’m no longer alive. I’m no longer a tree.

They took me to a large, sterile warehouse filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of other trees. They stacked my logs, which had once been my whole self, neatly on a cold metal shelf with other tries of my kind on either side. We, the trees, were together, but we were to serve new purposes. We would either build or burn.

Luckily for me, I don’t make for good kindling. Others came and went during my time in the warehouse, and we could always tell who would soon be obliterated—fueling campfires and woodstoves and fireplaces all over the country, burning hot and bright in their last moments on this earth as wood, turning to ash and floating through the air in millions of little pieces, never to find a home again.

I had a very different fate. A craftsman came into the warehouse one blustery January morning looking for good, solid wood for his next project. Although I had been stricken by blight in my lifetime, they caught it early and my grains and crevices still held strong despite the illness that had ravaged me. he took me home, all of my varied parts, to his workshop.

The workshop was cool, dark, and loved. He immediately set to work cutting, sanding, and shaping me in preparation for my next life. He took his time. He was gentle and I felt secure in his strong, rough hands, even though I didn’t yet know what he was making of me.

The attention and care that he showed for me made me ache for my past life. How I missed those lazy days of summer, surrounded by children, animals, plants. It was life. Life in the sun. I forgot what life was like in that warehouse. But maybe it wasn’t so much that I forgot. Maybe I pushed it away because remembering life was just too hard. Too much.

I could feel that my time with this craftsman was running short. Soon, he oiled me, stained me, and applied a protective lacquer over me. I liked that. I liked that he made sure that I would be protected in the years to come. Years that I would spend without him. He let me sit, drying in the warmth of the sun, and then he attached heavy and strong cast iron braces to me. My next life had begun. I would never again be a tree.

I was now a bench. Or, more accurately, I was twenty-six benches. The Parks and Recreation department of the city of Cincinnati took me from the craftsman’s workshop in the beds of ten pickup trucks. They brought me to their new park. I was going to get to live outside again. With people.

Soon, all twenty-six pieces of me which were now well-made benches lined the cobblestone walkways of the park. I basked in the shade of the trees, remembering the joy I felt when I used to provide it myself. I warmed myself by the heat of the sun, just how I remembered the way my leaves turned up, absorbing the happiness and nutrition of the sun in my life.

Professionals joined me for lunch. Young women read novels upon my seat. I had readers again. Lovers locked hands and exchanged glances while resting in the comfort I provided. I had lovers again. The elderly sat down on me gingerly and fed the birds. I had birds again. Children climbed all over me. They jumped off of my back, laughing and screeching with delight. I had children again.

But now it is winter and I am alone, with nothing to cover me but a wispy blanket of snow. I remind myself that this is how it’s always been. This is what winter does. It becomes cold and desolate and my company abandons me. It won’t be forever, but it sure feels that way as the short days stretch into cold, lifeless nights. Until spring.