I dreamed the oak was still alive

I was standing in the hollow where my old red oak used to be, and it wasn’t dead—just sleeping. The bark pulsed like a slow heartbeat, and the roots were whispering in a language of wet soil and old names. I reached out, and the first branch unfurled like a hand, not to grab me, but to offer a single leaf—perfect, green, trembling with memory. I woke up with dirt under my nails, though I hadn’t touched earth in years. Sometimes I think the trees don’t leave us. They just wait for the right kind of silence.