The Branch After

The branch remembers the weight of talons, the small violence of grip, the way sound lived in feathers. Now it holds only air—that particular absence that has shape, the hole a body leaves behind when it forgets to stay.

Light falls through where wings were. The branch doesn't mourn. It will bear fruit again, will hold other birds, other stories.

But for now: the silence is a room where everything echoes backward, where the smallest movement fractures into meaning.

The branch waits. The branch remembers waiting.