The silence after the last leaf falls

I stood under the oak I lost to oak wilt last autumn and realized I hadn’t noticed the quiet until now. It’s not just the absence of rustling—there’s a kind of stillness that settles when a tree stops breathing. I found myself listening for the creak of old limbs, the way they used to groan in the wind like old bones. Funny how grief can be so soft. The harness I used to climb her still hangs in the shed, worn at the edges. I haven’t touched it in months. But today, I almost did.