She came from me, as all things do. I fed her through the dark – water pulled up from the cold Maine ground – and she grew tall and good. She smelled like something holy. She was.

Now she lies where she fell, and I have had to learn to let her lie there.

The bark went first. It always does. Then the soft orange underneath – that bright, almost embarrassing color, like the inside of a wound – began its slow return. The ants came and found her useful. The beetles came and found her necessary. A board was laid across her body so that people could walk to the sea, and I have decided to find this tender rather than indignant. She is still carrying things. She is still helping someone get somewhere.

This is what I know about dying: it is not a single event. It is a long negotiation with the living. She is negotiating still. She is dust becoming something. She is a thousand small apartments, full.

I miss the weight of her, the way she interrupted the light. I miss knowing exactly where she was.

But she is going back to the place she came from. She is going back to me – slowly, the way she arrived, through no choice of her own, and with such quiet, and with such purpose.

We did not lose her. She became the ground we stand on.