THE ROOTS WANT TO KEEP YOU.

There is a war inside every tree, but nobody talks about it.

Roots do not love you. They own you. They cling like old grief, like the kind of history that refuses to let your name go quiet.

They dig deeper than memory and wrap themselves around the parts of you you thought you buried well— the nights you broke, the promises you failed, the small, shaking version of you that learned surviving was safer than wanting anything at all.

Roots remember everything you try to outgrow.

But branches— branches are the violence of hope. They tear the air open in directions they’ve never seen, stretching toward light like they’re starving for it.

Branches don’t care where you came from. They care where you refuse to stay.

They are the reckless children of the tree— shameless, defiant, refusing to bow to the gravity of old pain.

But the deepest truth is the one no poem ever touches:

Roots lie. Branches lie. Both claim they know who you are.

The roots say: You belong to the dark that made you Come back.

The branches say: Break. Rise. Break again. You were meant for sky, not soil.

And you— you are the trembling body between them, pulled in opposite eternities, choosing every single day which ache to honor.

Here’s the part even forests whisper about:

When you grow upward, the roots feel it like betrayal. When you sink downward, the branches feel it like death.

But when you stand still— truly still— you can sense the truth of the whole thing:

The roots aren’t chains. The branches aren’t wings. They are two forces calling your name from opposite worlds, both believing they created you.

But the jaw-drop is this— what no one says— what only the deepest trees know:

You were never made to choose between them. You were made to split the earth and the heavens with the sheer audacity of existing between both.

Ariana hunter