The Compost Cathedral

At the back fence, the pile breathes in its low liturgy, orange peels dimming into a weather of threads, tomato skins surrendering their brief red weather to the patient dark that turns everything into hum.

Moths arrive like ash remembering how to fly. The rain speaks through the lidless barrel, and each leaf, once a rigid hand of summer, loosens into the wet grammar of soil.

Somewhere beneath the cabbage ribs and tea leaves, white filaments stitch a quiet empire, spelling no doctrine but this: that ruin can become its own kind of shelter.

By dawn, the heap is warmer than the yard, a small furnace of last things, breathing softly. I stand before it with my empty bucket, as if waiting to be taught how to disappear well.