I step barefoot into the garden of vines pulling green from stone. Jasmine exhales without regret. Roses keep their secrets. The walls forget they were ever meant to keep things out. Water holds me— quiet, unremarkable, except for the way it softens the edges of thinking. The dogs nose the air, tracking nothing but time. No commands. No revelation. Only the silent theology of growth. Of things rising without reason, with the reward of itself. If I knew the jasmine sang poison into the wind, if the rose curled its bloom around a slow death— I would not preach. I would not caution. I would remove them. Because I have seen what comes of gods who let their children bleed in the garden and call it a lesson.
It is not about the feast, but the hunger that teaches you shape— how to bend without breaking, how to reach with empty hands and still return with something.
The world shrinks until it is one task, one drop, one breath— and still, you carry on.
No grand designs, only the daily architecture of survival: a grip, a balance, a moment held longer than expected.
What remains is not the size of the prize but the stretch of your spine toward it.
