Dear Nobody™,

I planted a tree six years ago, at a clearing in a small forest just south of Tennessee. Many days had passed since then when I returned, to the blue mountains and the rolling hills where I had gone so long before; in my mind it was the same, not a leaf or branch had shifted since that day six years ago, save the single tree at the center of the woodland clearing. It stood six feet above me, had grown from a small seed to tower over, blotting sunlight where I lay.

Since then I had not grown; had not spread my branches or bloomed in sunlight, had not basked in the blue of the smoky mountain ranges, or shaded beings as they trod the forest floor. Squirrels made their nests and raised their young, birds warmed eggs in gleaming treetops and even maggots in the deadfall spread their wings. It was only I that had not grown a single inch, had not spread my maggot-wings to fly, or felt the wind-waft pass me by. Like the deadfall I was dead, though even branches bloomed with dry-rot or the mushroom-cap. Twenty-seven years have I sat rooted nowhere, in a grove where no-one goes-no birdsong finds my ear, no wind blows through my branches, no sunlight warms and no moonlight shines upon me.

I took an axe to that tree, and watched it lay like deadfall in the grass.