The Great Remembering

Drip Lit/March 2025

One Monday morning, the day after Easter, the empty lot was overtaken by a forest. A forest. That’s right. Take a minute to let that seep in. A thick band of trees, a dense green mass of ash, birch, and maple trees grew up from what was once the mall and its parking lot. 

I awoke to my buzzing phone. 

“Pete, you seen the mall?” 

“God, Jay, I just woke up.”

I recognized the voice of the teacher/coach immediately. 

“Well someone pulled the prank of the century. You better go take a look.”

And sure enough, every foot of space of that damned lot was covered in trees. A crowd of  disheveled, half-awake townspeople gawked, mumbling in muted tones. Of course, the police cars were there, walkie talkies squawking, siren lights swirling. I left my car door hanging as I wandered over to the edge to join them. I looked down to my scuffed work boot, placed exactly where the empty lot would have been. A bed of dirt, shrubs, wet leaves spread, covered the once paved spot. I leaned in, listened, stuck my head in the trees, town sounds diminishing. 

“Be careful, man!” someone yelled.

I shrugged off the warning, doubting that a bunch of trees was going to hurt me. I could already hear the counter argument. 

“No a bunch of trees couldn’t hurt you but a god-damned forest that appears overnight might!”

Maybe that argument was correct, but I couldn’t resist leaning in and smelling the freshness, listening to a strange cacophony of birds, enjoying the rush of cool wind, a clean sigh blowing in my face. I had to pull back, resist the tug of the woods. 

“Alright, alright, folks, let’s get on with our days. We’ll have some people from the university here this afternoon. We’ll get this figured out, I promise,” I called over a megaphone. 

The Forest Crisis canceled school and work for most people that day. 

Then, you guessed it, fear took root quickly, flowered, spread its own kind of branches. My phone rang off the hook. 

“Mayor, we gotta get this under control. We gotta know exactly what we’re dealing with. We can’t let our children out to play with this-this-”

“Forest?” I said, feeling silly in saying that word in response to the  bourgeoning anxiety.