Between Green

The garden holds its breath between the rattle of winter and the thick green shout of May— a hush where nothing blooms yet but everything remembers hunger.

The soil remembers. Its darkness splits with reaching, with the small violence of roots that know what's already inside them.

And the air tastes different, sweet with a waiting that isn't patience but becoming, the space where becoming tastes like copper and rain.

I touch the branch where buds sit folded, perfect as secrets, each one a yes held back one more day, one more morning of not-yet.

The birds sing louder now as if to fill the gap between what was and what wants so badly to break open into green.