The child walks into a forest that no one planted—
not in this world, not in any world that counted her.
The trees do not ask where she's been.
They do not care that her name was forgotten
by the people who should have sung it
into lullabies, carved it into birthday cakes,
whispered it like a prayer before sleep.
She touches the bark. It does not flinch.
It does not pull away like hands that should have held her.
There is a tree that leans just enough
to feel like listening, like the mother
she conjures in empty rooms.
Its roots stretch toward a memory
she doesn't have words for—only sensation,
the pull of something older than her own grief,
deeper than the hollow where love should live.
This is not a tree from the yard
of a house where someone called her in for dinner,
where light spilled gold from kitchen windows
and her absence would be noticed.
This tree has no house. No voice.
But it remains.
And that is something.
That is everything.
In the dream, she sleeps beneath it,
finally small enough to be held
by something that will not leave.
She does not wake crying.
She does not wake at all.
Touched my heart ❤️
Beautiful and sad....
Well written.
Mayme