01
The Uprooted Tree
They pulled a tree from the earth — violently, completely — roots and all, ripped from the soil that had held it since it was a seed.
And yet the tree stood there, green. Its leaves hadn’t heard the news. Its branches still swayed as if the wind owed them something. The birds still sat on it. The shade still fell beneath it. To the eye, nothing had changed.
A man in the crowd — the kind who looks but does not see — asked:
“How is this possible? The roots are gone. The earth has let go. Yet the tree is alive?”
And another man — the kind who has buried something and knows what burial looks like — said softly:
“The tree doesn’t know yet.”
“It is still living off what it was. The sap that was already in the veins is still moving. The warmth it borrowed from the soil hasn’t cooled yet. It still remembers being whole. But memory is not the same as life. Warmth is not the same as fire. And green — green is not the same as growing.”
“Give it days. Give it silence. The leaves will brown at the edges first — quietly, the way doubt begins. Then the branches will stiffen — the way a heart hardens when it has been away from its Source too long. And then one morning, with no wind and no storm, the whole thing will collapse. Not because something struck it — but because nothing was holding it anymore.”