The dead branch inscribes wild reminders to the wind.
How many nights since it first blossomed did it revel in leaf brushing against leaves, know the fall of years, feel the rain drip away, nourishing the earth, staining this continent with its open, quiet astonishment?
It felt the sapwood itch itself into new rings, lose its vitality and turn to heartwood— a living death that refuses to decay, or lose its strength as long as the rings remain whole.
Even at its end, this branch refuses to lose even a drop of life. It gracefully lets the shouting blackbird nest in its leaves, leans into the sun cutting the air into roses, lets the lunar breeze swing it— a gate.
It will lean towards mornings it will never return to, now inert to the quarrel between leaves, birds and light— this soft creak of rays etching initials into its wood— as if this ending held memories worth blooming.
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