TOPPING

The children were gone. Lila, the youngest, had just moved out three months before. Marilyn reached up for the branch of the cherry tree, and the stepladder beneath her fell backwards as she did. Flattening out as it hit the lawn. Marilyn cursed and pulled herself up with one hand. In the other she held a small saw; she needed to prune, top off the branches of the tree, and the tree was too high now to do it from the lawn.

She sneezed twice, and cursed again. She had never had allergies until the year she turned forty, and now they hit her every single spring and every fall. It was late April, everything turning bright green, and the tree was covered in blossoms. There once had been several cherry trees in the yard. Jay had practically planted an orchard lining their side road when their daughter Allie was a toddler. He had told Allie it was the Cherry Lane from the song Puff the Magic Dragon, and he used to sing the song to her nightly while rocking her, over and over, and it used to