THE BEGINNING

She learned to tend a future she couldn’t see

Somewhere between the silence of early morning
and the sharp edge of sunset,
she found her way back.

Not to a place,
but to something she recognized.

The garden wasn’t always literal.
Sometimes it was cracked earth,
weeds pushing through stone.
Sometimes it was the row of herbs
on the windowsill she forgot to water.

Often, it was memory.

She walked the rows.

One still wilted.
One held too long in the shade.
One bore fruit she never picked.

In the garden, there was time.
No one asked her to be anything
except present.

She talked to the soil.
Not in apology,
but in acknowledgment.

She pressed seeds into the dirt,
hands steady.
Stopped asking them to prove anything.
Let them be.

The ghosts came, of course.

Some were loud,
rattling through old tools,
pulling at her attention.

Others settled beside her
in the quiet.

She did not send them away.

When she stood,
dirt under her nails,
breath slow in her chest,
the air shifted.

Not quite music.
Not memory.

Something close.

And she knew.