Black roots are digging into the story.
The cover is mold and its pages are dirt.
It's growing into quite the beautiful lie.
Its branches are strong and cold, the trunk is hollow.
We gather around it and cry-- but nobody really cares.

Its blind limbs desperately reach toward nothing,
twisting itself into painful knots.
Ears to its base and knuckles to its bark,
Tap. Tap. Tap. -- Hollow.
Very hollow.

The type of hollow that comes
from years of being dead.
Alone amidst the cracked mud and brush.
We decided not to cut it down,
for there are fates
worse than death.

-r0