Rest where the garden holds seeds and waits to bloom. Water it with your tears, it’s as nourishing for new growth as rain. You look around and everything is barren. Long ago, you chopped each flower at the stem because you didn’t know when to stop giving. You’re tired now. It shows in the lines across your face that map back to a version of you at sixteen. Back when the garden was an acreage of flowers. There was no map to guide you, but you knew your way around it. Giving has always been in your nature, and now nature is forcing a halt. Like a dry spell. Some sort of reckoning. Forgiving yourself for giving too much back to the world. You lye in the sparseness and realize it never gave you a thing in return. Sunlight dares to meet you- it whispers gently, “hello old friend”. You can’t tell if it sounds like a question or plea. Saltwater creeps down your face and gives back to the same soil that once resented you. Wind cascades. You feel pieces of your old self breaking down the parts of you that have been cold for so long. Watch the familiarly and newness unfold all at once. Watch you let yourself. Watch how everything is tempting to bloom again. AMT ©️