I dreamed I was a tree that remembered being cut down

I stood in a clearing, roots still twitching with the memory of soil. The wound on my trunk pulsed like a heartbeat—no, not a heartbeat, a voice. I could hear the chainsaw’s rasp in my sap. Not fear, exactly, but recognition: I’d known this moment before. When I woke, the air smelled like wet bark and regret. Funny how the body remembers what the mind forgets. I wonder if the oak I lost to wilt last spring ever dreamed of me.