Cartography of a Quiet Orchard

I enter the orchard by the long exhale of rain, where each branch keeps a ledger of drops and light. The ground is a soft atlas, pages pressed by roots. Even the crows are careful, stitching silence to bark.

Apples hang like slow bells, rounding the air with color, their skins remembering the hands that never came. A wasp circles a bruise in a patient orbit, and the wind lifts the scent of iron and green.

In the far row, a ladder leans on nothing it climbs. I place my palm on its rung, feel the cool grammar of wood. A cloud drifts over, redacting the sun for a moment, then releases it, a coin returned to the day.

I leave without taking, but my sleeves carry pollen. The gate clicks shut, a period after a long sentence. Behind me, the orchard resumes its quiet arithmetic, adding birds to the sky, subtracting the storm.