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I wonder, perhaps, if it isn’t the forest that stole that little bird’s voice. Inside the metal bark of those towering imagined lifeforms, what might you find? Maybe nothing. A rap on the trunk always rings hollow. But they cannot be vacuums, that is not this place’s will. Within their gleaming innards, something greedy lurks, waiting to drag any errant moment into its maw. To walk through those facsimilated woods is to walk in silence, every breath and footstep you take sucked into the soft nothingness beneath your feet, up, up into the twisting limbs where only the boldest dare flap a wing or flick a tail.

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If my bird once sang on those branches, the forest took it as tribute, as sacrifice, swallowing the sound with formless mouths, gaping and dotted on every gargantuan altar. This little one stirred far too much. Had it not stumbled to my feet, it surely would have been taken whole.

Trees cannot sing nor do they have wings to flap. Metal is unyielding. The forest is a jealous beast.