If Only Trees Could Talk

Chapter 15: When the Sky Swallowed Itself

(A lesson in remembering you are not small—you're made of light born from collapse.)

You lay in the forest tonight, the trees nothing more than shadows against a darker sky. There's no moon. No wind. Just you, your breath, and the stars—millions of them. Scattered like memories that never made it into words.

The quiet doesn't press tonight. It floats. Like something holding its own breath with you. You stare upward, heart slow, bones heavy, and wonder:

"How can something so far away feel like it knows me?"

The stars don't answer. But somehow, their silence does.

You used to think stars were just pretty things in the sky. Distant decorations. Background glitter. Until you learned what they really are.

Not soft.
Not silent.

Explosions. Collapses. Fire and fury.
A constant fight between pressure and gravity, trying to become something more.

Every star you see is a ghost, a history lesson in flame. Light that left long before you ever felt your first heartbreak. And yet—here it is. Reaching you. Still burning.

You close your eyes.

And suddenly, you're not in the forest anymore.

You're floating in blackness.
Weightless.
Small.

But not invisible.

The stars blink around you, louder now. You feel them in your chest, not like sound—but like memory. Like echoes of things, you haven't lived yet. A quiet voice whispers—not from the trees this time—but from everywhere at once:

"You think you're small because you feel too deeply."

You flinch.

Because it's true, isn't it?

You've been told you're too sensitive. Too dramatic. That you overthink. That you take up too much emotional space. And so, you shrank. Curled in on yourself. Tried to become "normal."

But maybe, just maybe, the universe didn't build you to be normal.

Maybe it built you like the stars:
To feel everything.
To collapse sometimes.
To shine anyway.

You think of all the times you broke down and called it weakness.
All the nights you cried quietly into your pillow, terrified someone might hear.
All the moments you looked in the mirror and hated your reflection because it didn't look like "success."

But here, under galaxies older than your bloodline, that shame doesn't make sense.

Because stars are born from chaos. From gravity folding in on itself so violently that it explodes into light.

Maybe you're like that too.

Maybe your sadness is stardust.
Maybe your heartbreak is hydrogen collapsing inward to become brightness.
Maybe all those moments you felt like dying were just the start of something cosmic.

The trees sway softly now.
You're back in the forest, and the stars are still there—still blinking, still burning.

"You are not small," the wind seems to murmur.

"You are vast. Made of fire. And collapse. And the kind of light that doesn't need permission to exist."

You breathe deeper.

You remember being thirteen and thinking you had to have it all figured out. That growing up meant being tough. That strength meant smiling when your soul was cracking. That no one would love the broken, quiet parts.

But maybe the stars love the quiet.
Maybe the broken is where the glow begins.

You lie there, earth beneath your spine, sky above your chest, and you feel it:

That you're not here to be perfect.
You're here to burn.
To fall apart and glow anyway.
To break and begin again, again, again.

And maybe you won't always be seen.
Maybe some people will never understand your fire.

But the stars do.

And they don't shine any less just because no one's looking.

"You are not small. You are starlight stitched from collapses—burning quietly, beautifully, into becoming."