The darkness is warm and heavy, comforting almost.

I can feel the sunlight upon my tough shell, so unlike how it felt to drift down, spinning and absolutely uncaring for the world, before settling here at my mothers feet, upon the hearty, green moss.
The tough but gentle hands that intricately selected me off the ground carefully peel back my outer coat, leaving me bare against the open air. Then the hands gingerly close around me, again encasing me in blackness.
When the fingers unfurl once again, I am only free for a second before they dump me into a tiny hole in the soil, and cover me with it.
It was there that I took root, there that I was watered and nurtured.
And it was there that I grew.

My branches have grown past the canopy, my bark strong and rough. Time has passed; I don’t know how much, but enough so that the small girl who watered me as a sapling has now grown up too.

Her knobby hands creak as they bring the woven basket filled with water to my trunk, still believing that it is her alone that keeps me alive.
Her people cut down my mother long ago; good wood for boats, she told me.
She talks to me as if I was a human like her. I wish I was sometimes.
I think I love her.

III.

    More time has passed. I have not seen the girl for many nights. I am not alone though.
    The rest of her people have gotten closer and closer to me, inching their ways across the forest. They cut down my kind like we are nothing, and I can only hope that they will leave me unharmed.
    Occasionally, a group of young boys will ramble by me, brandishing sticks and rocks pretending to be warriors in battle. Their shrieks of laughter echo throughout the forest, and resound within me even after they leave.
    It is times like these that I long to have legs, to be able to run through the woods like a wisp.
    Other times, I am glad that I am a tree, to have the beauty of long, thin branches, leaves swaying in the wind like they are dancing, clicking my twigs together in a cacophony of sounds. The wind takes some of my seeds along with it, making them flutter down like descending angels.
    As much as I wish to be human, their charming demeanor cannot match the undeniable delicacy of nature.

    The skies that have always watched over me are growing grayer. I can feel it too; the air is sticky, clogged with chemicals and smoke. It rains less now, my roots dryer than ever before.
    Smaller plants beneath me wilt faster, and the trees near me fall easier. I have only stayed up this long because of the extra care the girl gave me all that time ago. A few human lifetimes ago.
    My bark has turned and curled upon itself, snarled and old. My leaves take up a magnitude of space, before they fall off every autumn.
    The humans have left me be. Their buildings have taken shape around me, climbing higher into the sky than my trunk. Roads are paved below me, and people traverse them everyday.
    I have a feeling that I am dying. Because just like the girl, everything must die.

    Today I see her again.
    I see her in a little girl, her long black hair braided back, but she is not wearing her tribal clothing, instead blue pants and a pink shirt. She walks beside her mother, toddling along the street with tiny legs.
    I know that I am a tree, and trees aren’t supposed to have feelings, but when I see her, I know that what I feel is love. Maybe not for that girl on the street, but for the girl so long ago, who treated me like a friend.
    It is the purest form of love, built upon a bond of care and innocence.     
    And while I am an old tree, soon to fall to one more storm or strong gust of wind, I feel like I want to live. Longer than however much time I have left, just to see her again.
    Perhaps I might; maybe I could watch her grow up, catching glimpses of her and holding onto them like fireflies in a jar, treasured like fallen stars.
    But I can feel the bugs in me, burrowing and chewing. It began at my highest leaves, and seeped downward, until they advanced to my branches, my trunk, and from there, my roots.
    My body is weakened, my leaves smaller and thinner. My beauty is no longer there.
    And more than anything, I wish I had more time. I wish the girl would lay her dark eyes upon me once, rub her soft palms on my bark and kiss my trunk, throw her small arms around me in an embrace.
    But she never did.
 

    There was a storm last night.
    The unrelenting gales buffeted me until something cracked, splintered and fractured.
    That was all it took to knock me down.
    And as the life drew away from my dying trunk, as the bugs moved on to their next victim, all I could think was a single thought;
    I wish I had more time.