I took you home, gently laid you out and began removing the debris and little bugs that had already began the process of exploring you and exploiting you for their own survival.
I left you there, alone in a room, under warm light and did not come to see you again for a few days or more.
When next I put my eyes on you I knew I had to begin my own harvest, stripping off your now useless, flaking skin that once protected your heart below but was now hard and unyielding.
Deliberately and with care and with razor honed blade I begin a dissection of sorts. Parts that have rotted I must discard lest they damage you further, small limbs too fall to the floor. After not a long time at all you lay only as an inner core of your former self and all together, I begin to see you so differently than when I first laid eyes on you. You are the same but so different...I leave you again for a time...rest.
Deliberately, I stand over you with blade and saw. I discover more and more as you turn from one into many parts. I do not keep all of you now, only parts I will use do I keep. The rest along with what I stripped from you many days ago will burn in the fire...then the ash I will give to the soil.
Many days later after more rest you are finally ready for me, though I was not impatient. Thinking on it more a decision is made on what to do with what I have worked so hard to prepare...
You were once a branch, broken from a Mandrone in a storm. I rescued you from the forest floor, stripped you of your bark, split you, seasoned you. And, loved to imagine what you would become. You will not rot, not yet. You will not return to the Earth, not yet.
You will be transformed into a small work, sanded smooth, oiled, someone's eyes will take in your grain, ears will hear the strong resonance when it is bumped, hands will glide along the perfectly smooth finish, and when nosed, the fragrance of the forest will appear in one's minds eye...