Cartography of a Closed Orchard

The orchard is locked, yet the wind remembers how pears once fell like small bells into grass. Moss writes its slow green script on the latch, and light leans in, rehearsing an old key.

A bee stirs in the hinge of a gate, its body a soft engine warming silence. Clouds drag their bright sleeves through the branches, rearranging the shadows into a map.

I walk the fence line with a pocket of rain, counting the different names of absence. Inside, the trees carry their quiet fruit the way a house keeps the scent of bread.

By dusk, the air turns copper and kind. Somewhere a seed is choosing its dark. I leave with my palms smelling of bark, as if I had been granted a door.