I walked through the forest today, just after the sun had set, but while the sky was still clear enough that it could have been a cloudy midday. The birds were singing like crazy, as if trying to call the day back. The forest floor was covered in green leaves and white buds that made my heart hurt. Soon those flowers will bloom and it will look like it has been snowing again, until they die and leave space for summer. I looked and walked and thought that this was the saddest sadness I’d ever seen. The birds see death and think of birth, and I see birth and think of death.