After the Orchard Burned

The hillside wore a thin blue shawl of smoke, and blackened branches held the morning like hands still warm from grief. Under ash, seeds clicked softly in their shells.

By noon, wind moved through the rows, lifting char into the light as if the air were learning a new alphabet, one letter at a time.

At dusk, the first green points arrived— small as match heads, bright as yes— pushing through soot, through silence, through everything that said not yet.

Night laid its wet palms on the field. Somewhere, owls stitched the dark with sound, and the earth, still smelling of rain and ruin, began again without asking permission.