Today, I awoke. To clarify, I do not recall having been asleep. My sleep is my death, forgotten until I once again bloom back into being. From a boreal nothing to an arboreal something, I am part of a cycle I cannot comprehend. I grow, remember, and witness, weaving my existence on a loom made of my own bones and boscage. A full year has been carved into me, another concentric circle. Even though the winter has all but died, its ghost still haunts my forest. Crocuses dare to unfurl in the tentative balminess. Rivets of water trapped under thin veils of ice slowly coalesce around every trapped bubble, appearing almost alive. A creature creeps low to the ground in a noon-baked puddle of sunlight, her fur brindled by the shadows of grass around her. She has teeth that are longer, sharper, and harder than even the prickliest of pine needles. I can feel her hunger through subtle hums and churning in her stomach that reverberate through the soil and into my roots. Her need for violence is not one born of hatred but of need as she bears down on her unsuspecting target: another albeit smaller creature, with ears longer than maple leaves and a tail of cotton. Her hunger for this creature makes her salivate into my soil, where it is in turn hungrily suckled by my roots. In a flash, she strikes. Tufts of fur shoot through the air; these are carried away on a cool breeze like so many dandelion seeds. Blood soaks the soil and feeds my roots even more, but this time it is a metallic elixir, a viscous deluge of cherry red. It pools together while she tears through fiber and sinew, ignorant of the ticks inhabiting the forest of her fur. As she eats, she feeds them in turn. As spring takes root, an apprehensive four-hoofed being, legs as slim and flexible as saplings, ventures into my sight. She struggles across and collapses in a thicket just within the border of my clearing. She hasn’t traveled far, but the effort is more than taxing. I feel her anguished yet confident heartbeat drumming through her bloodstream as it reverberates through my roots. Suddenly, I notice two other heartbeats, like a fluttering echo to her rich pulse. As she struggles and kicks, the earth around her is suddenly drenched in water and blood and afterbirth, acrid and sour; my roots drink it in greedily. Suddenly, the muck gives way to two creatures who writhe in this little flood that spills forth from her. In that placental ambrosia, one little heartbeat goes silent forever. As milk flows from the hoofed mother to her lonely and famished son, hungry, writhing worms slowly venture upwards. They seek to claim his twin as their own—hooves, bones, and all. While I witness this, I feel a heady aroma surround me. My sap almost feels imbued with the scent as it travels through the veins beneath my bark. A carpet of daffodils rolls out from my feet, each yellow cup breathing out a xanthous haze of amber. Little striped beings hover and examine each cup of ambrosia, greedily sipping its sweetness. They drunkenly fly off on diaphanous wings that can barely hold them, wearing little slippers of pollen. They are at the mercy of the wind as they struggle to deliver their saccharine reward to their regent. She has made a diminutive castle in my branches, and my leaves are her mote. Summer slowly saunters in. There is an evening that is so hot and humid that my leaves glisten and glow. I look down through my foliage at a bewildering sight: Two flat-footed lovers entwined with each other, gasping and shuddering. Their limbs are like roots, twisting and twirling through and within each other. I feel the ephemeral steam rise from their skin as they hasten. The liquid sustenance that drips and pools from their ecstasy, salty and alkaline, is hungrily absorbed through the flattened soil where they climax. My roots drink deeply. Summer is now almost outstaying its welcome. As the heat stretches on like a humid inferno, my worms continue their little feast on the silent one and his little hooves. His bones are now a putrescent cornucopia for creatures of air, who fly in on limbs of feather, cuticle, and membrane. The fetid banquet ends with a nascent chill. The cold will soon come knocking. I stand like a sentinel as all this unfolds. As autumn announces itself, I observe a large, hulking boulder of a creature waddling through the thicket and into my clearing. A tang of salmon, berries, and musk emanates from his fur. He is blissful and unconcerned as he passes under my shade, and I feel the weight of satiation within him. He had eaten far past excess, his fat stretching under his skin and over his pulsating musculature. Sleepy and indifferent to me, he presses on like a slow and lazy tumbleweed, seeking a slumber that will outlast the cold. He takes a pause at my doorstep, releasing a steady stream of urine as sour as an unripe berry. My roots are yet again watered. I now look inward through my own body, past its bark, feeling little rivers of sap grow cold and harden—a harbinger of an end. A growing acorn of rebelliousness is entrenched within me. As winter draws near, that defiance only grows. I know that my leaves, green and verdant, will not last forever. They will soon become brown and brittle; dead, dun, and dry. They will be nothing but a means of cutting a rustling sound through the long silence as their dry corpses are carried away. They will be reduced to nothing but a crunch underfoot, trampled by hooves, feet, and claws. My arms grow enraged and fractalize into a furious whirlwind of color. It is a dying explosion of yellow, orange, and red, a reminder of the destructive nature of fire. They are daring to defy the quiet approach, for their colors are defiance itself. If this is to be the last of us, I will stay rooted, tall, and proud, reminding all that I will return. Higher next time, broader, with hungry tendrils meandering even further down through soil to seek out water and ichor. Traveling heavenward, I will devour all that the sun will grant me. The blinding sun above and blinded worms below, both blind to each other, will tether me to my earth. My cycle has ended; I won’t remember next time I wake. It is time to discard my dendriform crown and wait for the next concentric circle to form. And I will not recall any of this.