They say the first garden grew from the bones
of a forgotten city
steel girders rusting beneath lavender roots,
grief softened by moss.
We walked barefoot where highways once hissed,
the asphalt split by wild carrots
and the stubborn fists of dandelions.
Children played in the skeleton of a bank,
counting stones as currency.
No one missed the strums of machines.
We had learned to listen to other sounds
the murmur of water through reed,
the hush of leaves retelling stories
we thought we had lost.
We built our homes from what the sea spared:
driftwood, shells, glass made round with age.
Roofs that welcomed rain.
Windows shaped to honor the arc of sun.
Some of us still dreamed in fossil fuel,
woke sweating from the noise of combustion.
But even then, the bees returned
drunk on citrus and sage
reminding us of sweetness.
We no longer feared silence.
We let it gather
in the hollows of our throats
until we could speak again without poison.
And when the earth finally answered
not in thunder,
but in bloom
we promise never to forget
that it had always been trying
to love us back.
