Sometimes it feels like I'm a rotten tree still upright but already dead. Thin and hollow. My roots suck nothing from the ground, and my trees have fallen and withered away long ago. My flowers and my fruit lay crumbling to dust before me as dreams dashed and hopes crashed.
Yet people take my verticality for a sign that I'm alive, and I can fool myself agreeing with them. I just forgot to fall down. The sap is still.