As the last of the flowers have withered,
And the guests have washed their clothes,
The cemetery has new bodies to entomb,
I still feel your presence very close.

For every waking morning without you on our side,
Demands a tough facade to face every new dawn,
Growing responsibilities kept piling our plates,
I still hear your voice, guiding us on.

At times where people have seem to forget,
And your space at the table has been replaced,
Things and clothes packed neatly into boxes,
I still recall how it feels in your embrace.

The world that we know will continue to revolve,
With the sun, the moon, and its skies ever so blue,
Your memory lives on, in every piece of me;
I will choose to remember every last piece of you.

I’d cursed fate, I’d cursed the local gardens,
Where tulips bloomed in perfect patterns
The poppies red, the roses fair,
But not a single one felt rare

I was not pink, I was not bright,
I was the shade, the stem, the slight
No petals danced upon my stem,
I envied those who carried them

I was green—just green—no hue,
No blushing pink, no morning dew
A leaf alone, without a flower,
A half-thing born from root and hour

And so, I was a green leaf, just a part,
A lonely stem, a hollow heart
No pink petals graced my view,
I thought I’d never be whole or new

So I fled the garden, left behind
The pretty stems the world designed
And found a pond, serene, apart,
Where lotus flowers dared to start

That’s where I saw you: pink and warm,
Petals soft, defying norm
But something missing in your grace,
No green leaves wrapped around your base

At first, it scared me, how you fit,
How close we grew, how well we knit
But nature, wise and full of grace,
Had always planned this perfect place

But pink needs green, and green needs pink,
Together we are more than we think
A lotus formed not by one alone,
But leaf and petal, stem and stone

Some flowers don’t sprout all alone,
Some roots must tangle to feel grown
You, pink petals—tender, true
And I, green leaves, built just for you

Together, we are something rare,
A lotus strong in love and care
You, the petals soft and kind,
Me, the leaves that hold and bind

                                                            n
                                                   n           ­   u              
                           h                 y                    s      
                    g           t         k                     r      
                                         s                    e   
                   h                  ee              w        
                       g               b           o
                             i                   l            
                                    l       f
                                      n    
                                u      
                        ­   s

A wilting aster
Questioned Death
Whose body surrounded
With field of flowers—
Would they cry?
They answered,
Yes, though
You wouldn't know why.

Let it be the Mountain she finds Holy—
not because it sparkles,
seduces her
or speaks in riddles,

but because its dark loamy soil
receives her bare feet like a memory.

A prairie hill above the sea,
where grasses bow and whisper,
and the wind carries the salt and scent of things
too old for names—
that’s where the house stands.
Not built from stone,
but from time.
And longing.

And the laughter of those
who once remembered Eden.

Let her dig down,
as if the roots of a wildflower
were waiting to rise through her skin,
lifting her slowly from within—
the stem, the pistil,
the fragile yet indestructible bloom.
Let the soil speak to her in silence,
saying:

You are still loved.
You are still alive.
You are not what happened to you.

Let her turn toward the sun—
not in shame,
but in radiant defiance—
and know in that moment
where her help truly comes from.

Let her running to the mountain
be joy, not dread.
Let her ascent be not an exile,
but a return.

Let her wings unfold brazenly,
as the daughter of the living God.
Not tucked.
Not hidden.
Not compromised.

She does not belong to the mountain that mocks love
and feeds on the ruin of hearts,
or exploits that which is still unhealed

She belongs here—
where her own flesh and bone
become not only family
but friend,
through the common bond
of the soil that gives life to all who dare to sink into it.

She belongs
where peace lives in warm light on cold nights,
where cotton sheets smell of soap and skin,
and starlight sifts through trees
like the hush of forgiveness.

Let her remember her first love..
before the theft,
before the theater.
Before the wound.

Let her toes remember
what it was to wiggle in the dirt
of something unbroken,
unshamed,
true.

Let her find home again—
not in a place carved out for her,
but in the space she reclaims
with her own rootedness.

Let her petals unfold slowly in the sun—
but only with her feet deep in the mountain's soil,
where others also have planted their lives,
becoming one
in harmony of breath and memory and Grace.

She will not enter into a sepulcher
or a place that makes usury of her pain.
She will stand on the mount before the rising sun—
alone if she must,
but never abandoned.

And somewhere in the hush between
the breeze and the soil,
she may yet feel

the quiet echo
of someone still with her.