Icarus Tree

Grey bark peels

Dry roots shrivel

Leaves crunch

Limbs dangle

This drought got the best of me

Decay then took the rest of me

It was a perfect, awful recipe

Of denying my one Destiny

I grew larger than was sustainable

Guess I left my plot too soon

Thought I needed to soak in more sun

Already had the perfect view

When the weather was fair I grew and I grew to a size I had only ever dreamed of. When the rains stopped coming, and the heat lingered for weeks on end, I just couldn't keep up. I didn't store enough water to last this long. The sun singed the tips of my limbs, while beetles and other creatures fed on my base. The caterpillars that used to crawl on my leaves and the birds that used to build their homes in my crevices—they left. If I couldn't even keep myself alive, what did I have left to offer them?

I think the problem is I never saw myself as the tree—the source of growth for a local habitat, reliant on the ecosystem I helped create to build me up, too. I thought I was the sun—100 million miles away, a self-sufficient phenomenon feeding the universe. My ignorance meant I turned away from the environmental factors—the mulch that supported my soil and the critters that called me home—that got me to where I was at.

And now I'm here. Choking on dry air, exhausted. I'm wondering if I can downsize and humble myself, welcome back with open arms the things that once made me great. Or have they found new homes? Did they realize the biome I cultivated wasn't one-of-a-kind? Maybe now it's time to start over as a seed, hope I get as lucky as I did in my previous life, and try not to grow so close to the sun...