This Tree Says: ‘I’m Trying to Grow!’

Keep your stream to yourself, please.

I took this photo a few days ago in my local dog park. Bogotá, Colombia.

No me orines. Cuídame. Intento crecer.
Don’t pee on me. Take care of me. I’m trying to grow.

The sign is about dog behavior (I think), but I wonder if the person who was the marker-upper on the plastic tarp had learned a similar lesson from other humans.

Well, why not? Haven’t you learned something similar from your humans?

Maybe you are the one who did the peeing-on. Though you may have done it accidentally or as a joke or for a complicated reason, the other person had a “no” to give back.

Maybe someone did the peeing on you, and you had to say “no” to them.

No. Por favor. Intento crecer.

There is growth in the grief. Losing someone you just can’t share a life with. Letting them walk away. Shoving them out the door. Saying no.

No, no thank you. This is very sad. We are moving on.

There is so much growth to be experienced, and it will expand to the size of a tree if you let it happen. This tree-like growth will have such a trunk, branches like the arms of giants. It will scrape the sky. It will have red and yellow fruit that drops softly in the night and waits for someone to walk down the…