admiration through emulation

With my back pressed against her trunk, my gaze to the sky, and my feet kicked up onto her own, I said the only thing that I could think of to comfort us:

~it’s ok tree, I’m gonna die here too~

I closed my eyes and the back of my body, the back of my head, turned into a checkerboard of flesh and light and dissolved in an outward expansion, emanating from my core and disappearing into the land all at once. 

i will live here, and then i will die here, i thought--simplifying what feels like a complex world of personal journeys and endeavors and efforts and triumphs and challenges into a world of much more finite simplicity.  

if I could write my own demise it would surely be the casual lie down and the gentle break down exhibited by this tree.  What more grace could you ask after a life of such splendor?