In the mornings, before the coffee finished brewing, you used to stand at the kitchen window and look out at them.

The purple locusts didn’t just bloom—they arrived. Overnight, it seemed, the branches would fill with clusters of soft violet blossoms, each one catching the light like a quiet celebration. From the window, the whole yard felt transformed, as if spring had chosen your backyard as its favorite place to linger.

There were chairs beneath them—never perfectly arranged, always a little off—as if someone had just stood up to stretch or laugh or chase a drifting petal. On warmer days, you’d sit there, looking up through the blossoms while the world filtered down in shades of pink and green. Even the breeze felt different under those trees, gentler somehow, like it knew better than to rush.

You didn’t think about how long they’d last.

No one ever does.

When the beetles came, they were small at first. Easy to dismiss. Just another passing nuisance in the rhythm of the seasons. But they stayed. And multiplied. Leaves thinned, blossoms faltered, and the vibrant canopy you’d come to expect began to look tired… then fragile.

You tried—of course you did. Sprays, treatments, late evenings spent examining bark and branches, hoping to catch something early enough to matter. It felt like trying to hold onto a season that had already decided to move on.

One by one, the trees gave in.

Now, when you stand at the kitchen window, the view is still beautiful in its own way—the hills haven’t gone anywhere, and the sky still stretches wide and blue. But there’s a space where the color used to live. A quiet absence where those blossoms once gathered light and memory.

And yet, sometimes, in the right kind of morning, you can almost see them again.

Not really—but enough.

A hint of purple where the branches used to sway. The ghost of shade where the chairs still sit. The feeling of a breeze that remembers what it once carried.

You miss the trees.

But more than that, you carry them—every spring, whether they bloom or not.