The tree fell into that place where words and meaning were not connected.
Its roots, starved of nutrient for a thousand years, had packed their suitcases, unnoticed.
They left behind a shell of the tree on a chemical plateau painted mint green.

The tree did not fear the winter's coming, it merely slowed every function to a flicker.
There was a feeling that everything would be okay if it could just remove that bit of oil and that speck of carcinogen from the soil.
There was tile on the plateau, and salt water began to pool in geometrically perfect grids, following grout to the drain where it could bend lower and study its mortality farther toward the center of the earth where time becomes slower from a certain perspective high in the clouds ringing the central ocean.

Floating below the clouds became an obsession in which it tried to wash all the toxic bark from its exterior but failed in the attempt.
The truth was that it was the corpse of an ancient genetic experiment, run against the brick wall of liquid imagination.

Change came slowly to the soap flake world of its youth.
Soon tides washed over the ancient delta, removing all importance and replacing it with sodium chloride and plastics made of petrochemical.
Eventually the vacuum of space came to the land, and the tree was laid bare.