04/14/2026 i walk the garden at an hour that doesn't belong to clocks, when the light is soft enough to forgive me. everything is growing at once, wildly, insistently. tangled green reaching over itself, vines threading through ribs of air, roots whisperig beneath the soil like quiet arguments i can't quite hear. there is no malice in the way it crowds me, only need. only becoming.

(i used to think love meant letting it all grow.)

but the garden has begun to ache with its own abundance. leaves press against leaves until they forget the sun, blossoms open into shadows and call it enough. something in me tightens as i stand there, hands full of nothing but hesitation, knowing that to care for this place i must learn a softer kind of cruelty.

(the shears feel too sharp for a heart like mine. i hold them anyway.)

i tell myself that cutting is not the same as erasing. that tending is not betrayal. still, each stem i choose feels liek choosing against something else, like turning my face toward one small brightness and letting another dim behind me. the air holds its breath with every quiet snap, every falling piece of what once reached for me.

(and yet, light begins to move again.)

it slips through the spaces i make, touches what was hidden, warms what i almost lost in the keeping of too much. the plants that remain do not accuse me. they open wider. they breathe easier. they do not ask me why i did not save everything.

perhaps the garden understands something i am still learning: that love is not proven by how much i can hold, but by how gently i can choose. so i keep going, slower now, listening for what leans toward me with quiet certainty, for what does not strain to be seen. i leave some things uncut, even when they ask. i let some reaching hands fall back into the soil. i forgive myself for the empty spaces, for the places where nothing grows but rest.

and in that breathing room, in that careful, deliberate less, something like peace begins to root.