They took down all the trees. It was over quickly, their slow life was ended by a few bulldozers. I grew up with them. I crawled into their limbs as an escape. I hid near their roots when I needed a reprieve the regular world. I imagined their conversations as the wind pushed itself through their leaves. They were my secret garden, a microcosm of all of the great forests I would someday visit and find familiar. Today these memories represent ghosts. A severed shell remains of them. Sitting cut on the cool night grass; they are slowly dying.