My Foray into the Anasphere

I enter a forest, it's stark enough to see limbs hugging cold birch trunks. It knows that some of the sturdier trees are in peril, too, and does not know what to do. Its population bears no one shape or color, cannot be sexed.
I am a feature of this forest, withered, knobby. Some say I'm a dying reed and others claim it's my kind that is going extinct -- not because the disease that gnaws our bark, sap and soul is obsolescent -- we are dwindling in numbers because it is killing us.
It. Kills. Us.