Daisies by Victoria Overdorf

There is a house at the the end of the road with a hundred wilted daises; a thousand fallen leaves, and a sea of parched grass. The house has a tree. It has shriveled with age and inevitably became a memory of the times before the house was built. It's windy on this day, and the branches of the tree are bending in an unnatural way. A few of them snap off and fall to the ground and smash the fragile leaves. The balance has been disrupted. The branches of which are supposed to be part of the tree, have fallen. The leaves aren't the main focus of the yard anymore. All that can be thought about the house now is that it looks broken and unkempt. There isn't anyone to move the branches, so they remain where they fell. Over a year, more branches fall; some landing atop the roof, others continue to collect in the grass. The house has now been labeled "abandoned". If a person had lived there, they would have had the "decency" to remove the branches. The occupant had died silently long ago, and had left the house and the tree to the elements.

There was a fire a summer later. Where it started was unknown. It took half of the house up in flames. The walls curled, the paint melted, and the yard was left scorched. Even still, the house was left as it was for others to judge. By now, the house was known to be condemned. In autumn, children rode their bikes past it, as mothers warned them to not get too close. At night, people would stroll past and observe the damage of the house and yard, and say the same thing. "What a shame," they'd say, "It was such a lovely house". But that was a long time ago. Back when the ancient tree had newly met the house built upon its grasses, where a nice old couple had lived. The man had left one day in an ambulance, and never returned to the house. The woman lived on her own there for a little while, but then passed away to join her husband in an unknown place. So the house was left as it was; untouched for all of the years to follow, but finally was burnt halfway to the ground. When you looked at the house, you would see an armchair amongst the rubble. It was where the old woman would sit and read her book; occasionally glancing out the window to admire the tree. The tree still stands as sturdy as it had, but the woman and the house had both perished.
The spring after, there was a storm. It came quietly one night, and stayed for several days. The rain accumulated, and large portions of the town were flooded. The water lodged beneath the floorboards that remained of the house. The wood rotted quickly and crumbled. All that you could see when you passed now were a few boards and some broken glass. The rest of the materials of the house had fallen down and sunk into the dirt. By now, the city had sent a truck to gather the remaining parts of the structure. They came late one afternoon, collected the material, and left. All that stood now were the trees that hovered over the naked dirt where the house once stood. Shadows cast over the soil and created foreign patterns. Once the parts of the house had been hauled off, it was time for a decision to be made about the trees. "They're so beautiful, it would be a shame to cut them down," one man said. Others disagreed, and it was decided that they would be cut down to make room for new developments.
The day turned into night; the last night that the trees stood where they had been for so long. Their branches twisted in the wind, seeming to be communicating their sorrow to one another through simple movement. It was cold that night, and when all was still, nothing could be heard but the chilling sound of the wind whistling through the treetops. Hours passed, and soon the sun was beginning to peek through the leaves. The sound of large trucks approached the lot, and then stopped. Men stepped out of the car, did their deed, and left. The tree stumps were loaded into the back of their trucks in sections, and the rest of the branches were to be burned that night. The men left and drove away. All that remained were tree stumps and burnt daisies.