I woke to the clatter between wind and word, the light not rising but blooming— soft as breath caught on the edge of deciding.
A crow passes overhead without shadow. A stone turnes itself over in the stream and begins again.
Time is not a clock, but a fern, unfurling its memory with no urgency, no apology.
I am decades lived, six so far— and still the grass kneels under my step, still the world tries to tell me something in the flick of a yes, in the flash before thunder.
A spider repairs her web between the ribs of a gate. The air tastes of iron and oranges.
It is more than enough to have arrived, to still be arriving.