Tender Persistence

Moss writes on stone in the language of years— each green filament a whisper, the rock listening.

The lichen blooms orange where no one walks, unborrowed and small, asking only surface and time.

We call growth thunder: roots shattering concrete, vines claiming walls. But the real work moves soft— water learning every crack, green reaching through the smallest opening.

A seed falls into darkness, waits. The root descends into silence, patient, building empires the earth keeps.

What we name breaking is only the other side of becoming.