Nature records the living. The trees speak amongst themselves, replaying our human errors. They make note of those mistakes of ego and the heart that define, at the least, a fragment of our personhood. The terror of violence we inflict and our expectations of growth through arguments. “The human face,” they say, “has no true enemy but time.”

The trees, their leaves in laughter. The canopy of vines above shouts to the sun in orchestrated monkey holler. “When will the humans leave? When will they be done?” The sun asks them, “Aren’t they entertaining? The little things they do to themselves and to each other?”

The monkeys swing through the trees. The monkey troop sway the branches, swerve the way of the rollercoaster, the forest going for a ride. The lead monkey halts at the approach of a jungle rat, timid and tender. The jungle rat gone, gulped fur and all, down the minor simian’s throat.

In a city, a man lifts a leg. A cottoned floof erupts from his anus, a fresh bloom for an ancient world.