The Forest Remembers Our Names

I stood where the treeline used to breathe,

Sap still warm on the broken leaves;

Distant saws wept into the air,

Their metal grief too sharp to bear.

I watched the soil cough up its past,

Ring by ring unspooled too fast,

And every branch that slumped in rain

Carried a memory carved in pain.

The wind tried speaking through the gaps,

But nothing answered back.

And I swear the forest knew our steps,

Knew every dream we once had kept;

Even as the fires called our claim,

It whispered fragments of our names.

I stood there helpless in the flame—

A witness with no vow to tame,

Hearing roots cry through the dark

As the forest dimmed its spark.

A fox fled past with haunted eyes,

Carrying echoes of its dying cries;

The river choked on ash and clay,

A tongue of silver gone to grey.

I wrote the moment in my chest,

A truth no time could dispossess,

And felt the land beneath my feet

Lose one more echo to defeat.

I saw the forest call for help,

But no one listened but myself;

Its final plea cut through the rain—

A whisper trembling like a vein.

If silence buried every tree,

Its wounds still bled through memory,

Marking me with all its blame

As the forest spoke our names.

I traced the stumps like fallen bones,

Kept vigil with the earth alone;

I learned that endings speak in rust,

In quiet roots, in dying dust.

A witness walking through the ache—

Unable to give back what we take.

And when the last green breath withdrew,

I felt it pass straight through me too;

I hold its sorrow in my frame,

A vow engraved in embered flame.

Even when the world forgets,

The forest keeps our silhouettes—

And somewhere in its fading veins,

It still remembers our names.