Lichen

The stone learns to bloom, two lives folded into one— algae holds the fire, fungus drinks the rain.

No voice in this alliance, just the slow work of becoming. A thousand years drawn across a single arm's breadth, each ring a season of waiting, each color a conversation the stone has with the sky.

We rush past, calling it ornament, this ancient bargain, this proof that tenderness wears no hurry, that transformation happens in the margins, in the patient dark where roots refuse to break faith.

The lichen spreads like whispered secrets, teaching stone its own softness, teaching us that persistence is not the fist, but the hand that stays open against the wind, waiting for what will root there.