When did the sapling lose its colors? When did it stop growing so fast, in so many directions, braving the sky and the whole world around it? When did it start to fold in on itself and hide away?
Did something happen? Was there a terrible storm? A storm so strong and laced with violence that fear shook the poor thing until its roots retracted, scared to dig any deeper and be met with the force again? Or was it something mild and gentle? Was the sapling merely fragile and a victim of its own soft, malleable youth?
Was it inevitable? Or is there something that the sapling should’ve done—or shouldn’t have done—that would’ve allowed it to stand with the will it once had? Is there nothing the sapling could have done? Was the sapling always meant to have been like this? Like this?
What would the sapling be like now if it hadn’t changed? How far would it reach? How tall would it stand? How loudly would it sing? Would the wind and birds pause a while to hear its voice? How bright would its flowers be? Would its flowers actually bloom? Would the sun look its way and shine in delight? Would the trees crowd around it, standing tall with pride?
But would the sapling still be the sapling, this same sapling, if what had happened had not happened? If the sapling hadn’t changed? If the sapling was never meant to change? Did the sapling bring this upon itself? Is it entirely the fault of the little sapling?
Did this tragedy happen to the other saplings, too? Is it a viral plague, ready to devour the others around it? Are all little saplings doomed to the same sad fate, to watch their own colors wash away with every showering rain? Or was it just this sapling? Just this one?
What had the sapling done to deserve such sadness? Or was it just by chance that the sapling was chosen, unluckily? Or was it unlucky because of something it had done? Or because of something it had been?
Did anything really happen to the sapling? Did it really lose its colors, its leaves, its strength, its everything? Was it just the sapling’s own worries? Its ever berating questions, not of curiosity but of imagined anxiety? Or was that just what the others wanted to think, that it was all that the sapling had made up? That it wasn’t real at all?
Then why did the sapling lose its colors? Why did it stop growing so fast, in so many directions, braving the sky and the whole world around it? Why did it start to fold in on itself and hide away?
