The Forest

Bark and branch and trunk and twig and leaf and phloem. Trees are more than these component parts, as are we. Skin and synapse and cell and cilia and membrane and muscle; the sum of us. And we as people become communities, societies, civilisations. Yet we are not trees. We do not flourish if we are not forests. We do not grow taller by blocking out the light of others. We do not suffocate neighbours with our roots. And yet we do. Weeding out what is different, then fighting with ourselves fo...