I planted roses where your voice once slept—
thorns now guard the dirt of things we never said.
The spade shakes in my hands, still slick with rain,
as I dig up August’s bones, month after month,
asking the earth to make meaning of this rot.

The lilies you loved sag into cursive,
their stems writing elegies in the language of wilt.
I feed them sunlight like apology letters,
but they drink only the tears of storm drains,
bloom only when I whisper how I’m failing.

Tonight, a green shoot cracks a concrete grief.
It does not know your name, does not care
that I’ve memorized the algebra of leaving—
it just rises, reckless and half-alive,
wearing its hunger like a prayer flag.

I touch the wound of its beginning.
Somewhere, deep in the dark, a root twists
into the shape of a chord I can almost name.
The garden hums: *To grow is not to forget.
To grow is to make a cradle of the break.*