Timber

How cruel is it to force a sapling to watch a weed grow in the oak it came from. All it’s ever known is etched in the edges of the bark that protects the sweet sap from dripping out of its creator's sturdy stump, and now the almost bare tree that was once fat with youth is succumbing to the infection that twists inside to hollow out its bones. Every time the sun wakes, the wind stands still waiting for the recurring sound of an oak branch crumbling to the Earth’s floor to play like an alarm so that it can run to force the sapling to dance, testing whether or not the saplings' roots are sturdy with hope. Leaves dressed in brown deteriorate into the dirt and sunlight targets the sapling that it was never able to reach before, burning into its youth to kill innocence and replace it with maturity. The flowers that are close to the sapling's roots work together to entice happiness to sprout from its inexperienced arms but the moon's cool breeze steals the fragile leaf from the sapling's grasp. Surrounding trees desperately grow towards the sapling as its oak tree crumbles so that the lurking hurricane doesn’t drown the sapling with its tears. Sometimes the oak tree manages to straighten its back, distracting the sapling from the new vines that are choking the top of its withered body. When exhaustion sings its siren song, the sapling wonders if it would be easier to release the oak into the lumberjack's desires so that it didn’t have to hear the hollow echo that the woodpecker taunts but love clogs the noise to replace it with visions of a possible future. So as time continues to pass on, the sapling soaks in the infinite memories the soil stored for it to never forget, and it wrestles with the word “timber”.