I flip through the dry pages of the textbook until they make a light breeze that tastes of salty dust. The root maze catches my eyes on the tangles that spread beneath the mangrove tree set deep in the swamp. The breeze slows, stops, and the salt collects and mixes in the water that the roots carry to the leaves. Wood like this is emulsified, compressed, changed into the paper I hold in my hands. If I were there, would I protect the tree?

The mudskipper clings to the roots, a fish out of water. It swims amidst the bramble and sunlight filters through making the water opaque and bright. What should be a tangle of timber is a thickly woven puzzle with each piece of lichen-crusted bark fitting over, under, and around the next. I imagine the scent of cedar is cloying as it bakes in the brackish water beneath the tree. On tiptoes, the mangrove stands in the tide and the mudskipper scales the trunk—slippery at first, then dry and papery. It does the job I cannot and safeguards the tree as it stretches to the spindly branches at the top. Instead, I look down past green filtered sunlight, past knobbed bark, even past the mudskipper who looks back at me. Two-dimensional and paper-thin.