Beneath the Bark

Count every ring; measure every scar,
judge what I’ve endured by how weathered you see me.
But the years that hardened my outer shell
never told the whole story of me.

Only when I fell
did the world look inside.

And there, beneath the bark,
lay everything I had been,
the years, the wounds, the life,
and all the things I never showed.

Fallen, forgotten,
still I remember.