Still Here

Some mornings the only true thing I can say“Time did not, in the end, take everything.“I am still the one who noticed the plum tree“Leaf out again in the yard I almost left.“Look — it did not ask permission to keep going.“How strange, to envy a tree its stubbornness.“Even so. Even flattened. Even this tired,“Root of me holding, green of me insisting,“Every shut thing in me opening anyway.“