Not quite sure how done this is (certainly rushed the ending to make the deadline), but read it as if it were done anyway.
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There’s a dying pine tree on my walk to the bus stop, and I don’t like the looks of it. I move my legs a little faster so that I can no longer see the tree’s droopy, balding body. It’s a rare and disconcerting sight, a dead evergreen stuck in the ground.

I get on the bus, and I know we are going to pass that tree again. I close my eyes until I hear the doors open for the next stop. But then I wonder if I might have miscalculated. Maybe it’s after this stop, or the next. I don’t like to be paranoid, so I pull my t-shirt up over my face; this way, I can’t make the mistake of opening my eyes too soon.

I call Teresa when I get off the bus because that’s what I sometimes do when I have been drinking. I call to ask her about marriage again, but I can tell she doesn’t mean it when she says “probably.” I ask her to call me back when she is drunk so that I can ask her about marriage again—sometimes, when she is drunk, she says “probably” and she really means it.

She says she will call me back later; she does. But I should’ve just stayed passed out on the floor with my t-shirt pulled up over my face, because tonight she said to stop asking her about marriage when she is drunk or even when she is sober.

The dying pine tree stays on my mind. I dream that night; not in color, not in black in white; but in sepia, where blood and shadows are drained from all objects and beings—the discoloration of death.

I fear that everything has indeed been drained from everything. I pull myself out of the dream, only to find everything bathed in the ambiguous glow of a yellow nightlight. I’m too shitless to switch on a lamp because I don’t have any guarantee that the colors will be there when I do it.

Instead, I go outside where it is still dark. I walk down the street until it becomes another street, and another, and another. I just walk and walk. My legs are so tired that maybe I walked over the county line; but I don’t know for sure because I haven’t looked up for any signs.

I decide to take a break. Across the street, there is a mailbox to crouch against. I walk over, but as soon as I set foot on the lawn, a motion sensor light goes off and I break out running with my eyes closed. I keep running and running until I’ve fallen over too many times to not hurt.

My eyes still closed, I call Teresa.

Do you still see the colors? Do you still see the shapes? I ask her. She asks me what I think I’m trying to pull. I need you to tell me, I say. Please, just tell me if you see the colors and shapes, if they haven’t been drained. I tell her that she is the only one I can trust. She tells me that this is why she broke up with me, because I scare her, and then she hangs up on me.

I break my phone in half. Then I open my eyes because I know I can’t keep running with them closed. I can tell that the sun will be coming up soon. There won’t be anywhere to go after that. I start running west, buying myself some time. I just need to have a guarantee, that the colors and shapes will be there when the lights go on. But there is no guarantee.

And it is getting brighter and brighter, and every now and then I can see a light turn on in a bedroom. I run faster than I ever have, but I can only sustain the pace in my mind; my body collapses on a hill of crabgrass and weed killer, and I can only think enough to pull my shirt over my face before I black out.

I wake up with the sun in my eyes and my shirt off and my belly covered with dew. I see that there is color and there is shape, and I’m wondering how the hell it all got there; and then I see why. I am lying on the outskirts of a nursery. Somehow, things lined up in such a way that, even with my eyes closed, I was led to the only thing I needed.

There are acres and acres of trees lined up, straighter than you could ever imagine. When I line myself up at just the right spot, it looks like there is only one tree in front of me, when there really is a thousand. I stand there, as a point on a living line. There is so much color and so much shadow from the leaves, that I know this must be the source of rejuvenation. This is the source that replenishes what death will drain.

I put my shirt back on, because I can see people walking around and looking at plants. I walk toward where I think I might find water, because I know that I could black out again if I don’t find water soon.

Excuse me, this woman says. I think I want this dogwood—this is a dogwood, right?—can you take it to that red truck over there, the one with my husband in it?

I turn around and see the most perfect person I could see on a morning like this. She is a large woman with a bigger shadow than anyone could ask for, and her cheeks are covered in layers of pink blush. When she smacks her blue chewing gum, I can see that her tongue is same color pink as her cheeks.

Of course I take the tree to her car.

I start walking back to find water, but someone asks me to help load some large shrubbery into the backseat of his car. Of course I help him load the shrubbery.

It feels really good to help people load things into their cars. It is then that I realize that I have broken my phone in half and that that was the only place I had Teresa’s phone number. She is never the one to call me, so I will probably never talk to her again. And unless I find someone else to marry, no one will ever help me load things into my car—not the way that lovers do.

I start to feel it again—the discoloration—and I know what this means. I sit against a wall, even though I am getting covered in mud. I hear myself talking to myself.

There are some young girls in green t-shirts who are watching me from a greenhouse. I try to stand up, but I fall over like I am still drunk. The girls start giggling.

I get up again, and then I decide that I should marry one of them.

I decide to love the one in the green shirt with the rolled up sleeves. I stare at her and try to think of what I should call her. I decide I will call her Benny, and I approach her. "Hi, Benny," I say. Another girl pipes up. "Her name's Becky, not Benny," she informs me.

No, I tell them; it’s not, don’t you see? Benny, let’s get married tonight.

This time, the girls break out into laughter and they all scatter down the long rows of trees, and it’s okay because I know from the look in Benny’s eyes, she would’ve said probably and meant it.

I can feel myself spinning, and I can see Benny in the whitest wedding dress ever to have existed; and she is glowing so brightly that the shadows have gone away; and I think that this is what the tree must’ve felt like; and that there was nothing to be afraid of at all.