A Friend Made of Wood

I was a fat, quiet child.

The kind that takes up space but is never invited to fill it.

At home, love was something other families had. My parents were there, but not with me. No hugs that lasted. No questions that waited for answers. I learned early that silence was safer than asking to be seen.

Outside was not kinder. Children notice bodies like mine. They notice who runs slower, who breathes louder, who doesn’t belong to the shape of the game. So I stayed on the edges. Watching. Learning how to disappear without leaving.

That was when I found him.

A dry, knotted branch in the garden of our apartment complex.

Broken. Useless. Left behind.

I picked him up because he looked like me.

I talked to him. Not the way children play—but the way lonely people confess. I told him things I had never said out loud. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t get bored. He didn’t tell me to stop being strange.

He listened.

He became my friend.

Other children saw me from far away. A fat kid talking to a piece of wood. They felt sorry for me. They called me over, their voices thick with pity.

I didn’t go.

I wasn’t lonely anymore.

With him, I was enough. I didn’t have to be funny, thinner, louder, or normal. I could just exist. And that was something no human had ever allowed me to do.

Years have passed.

People have come and gone.

Words have been used as weapons.

Silence has learned to hurt.

And yet, I still miss that dry branch.

Because he was the first friend who taught me this:

That companionship doesn’t have to speak loudly.

That love doesn’t have to demand.

That staying can be a form of kindness.

He never left me.

The world just taught me to put him down.