THE WAITING WEIGHT

Some roots hold fast, even when the bloom won’t come.

She feared the weight of the unknown might bury her before anything beautiful emerged.

The dirt already pressing against her chest, the slow suffocation of not knowing. Not yet. Not now. The waiting wrapped tight as a shroud.

She told herself to hold still. That this was the season for patience. That roots take time. That maybe hope was just something to sit through. A kind of weather.

But waiting isn’t soft. It isn’t passive. It gnaws. It grips the ribcage and presses down until the breath comes out thin and trembling.

She soothed the soil. Made space.

But nothing grew.

She whispered prayers into the dark, but her faith was tired. Skeptical. She asked for signs, but the signs stayed silent. The earth didn’t stir.

She waited. The hope, the fear, the maybe. The crushing weight of what-if.

She imagined wings, waiting to unfold. Imagined herself rising like a mythic creature. But even the imagining began to ache.

It would have been easier to stop wanting. To let the hunger rot away into something simpler. To stay buried.

But when the breeze came—a soft shift, a faint change in the air—she felt it before she heard it.

She stood.

And though the weight was still there, pressing at her back, she leaned toward the breeze. Lifted her chin.

There was no promise in the air. No guarantee. Only motion. Only the chance to move.

She followed.