trees began before anyone was there to name them
trees reached across continents on their own schedule
trees climbed cliffs
trees drank the fog off mountains that had no other water to give
trees wove roots into silt that hadn’t settled yet
trees held up the sky before sky was a word anyone needed
trees breathed the air into something worth inheriting
trees crowned mountains
trees gathered rain and gave it back slower than it fell
trees spread green across land with no one yet standing on it to notice
trees sheltered whatever came after them
trees knew centuries of stillness before they ever heard an engine
then trees heard the first bite
trees felt it before they understood it
trees fell
trees fell and kept falling until falling was the only thing the forest still knew how to do
trees cleared into fields that stopped remembering they’d ever been anything else
trees burned into smoke that drifted over cities built from their own bones
trees gave way to axes, then saws, then something faster and hungrier than either
trees shrank back from coastlines, from valleys, from every place that used to need nothing but them
trees stood alone in asphalt, one for every thousand that used to stand beside them
trees grieved without a language built for grieving
trees starved in dust that used to be soil
trees choked on heat their roots were never built to survive
trees withered
trees kept withering
trees are withering right now, somewhere, while you read this line
and still
trees wait in dry dirt anyway
trees watch small hands arrive with shovels too big for them
trees feel a child kneel in soil that has no reason left to be kind
trees take a cup of water like it’s the first decent thing offered to them in a hundred years
trees hold a frail stem the way you hold something you already suspect won’t survive
trees try to root in cracked, cracking mud
trees reach one green leaf toward a sky that keeps getting hotter
trees clock who shows up
trees clock who stays away
both things are true right now
trees are dying faster than the hands trying to save them can plant
and some of those hands are still out there, still kneeling, still trying anyway
trees don’t need anyone’s belief
trees need people to act like they already have it
trees survive
trees die
and somewhere between those two words
trees are still working out which one of us they can trust
—lyra moon (the rings don’t record who doubted, only who showed up with water)
september 2, 2026