The ground does not apologize
for its hardness.
The seed does not ask permission
to split open.
I have been buried before —
in silence, in refusal,
in the mouths of those
who mispronounced my name
and called it correction.
Still I rose.
Not because the soil was kind
but because rising
was the only language
my roots remembered.
They will redact your name
from their pages.
They cannot redact it
from the sky.
Every poem you buried in the dark
is already climbing.
Every word they returned unopened
found another door
and walked through it singing.
Do not mistake delay for denial.
Do not mistake the closed fist
for the final word.
The tree does not mourn
the season that stripped it bare.
It simply
waits,
and grows,
and waits,
and grows —
until one morning
even its shadow
is enough to shelter someone.
So keep writing.
Keep showing up
to the blank page
like it owes you nothing
and you owe it everything.
Because you do.
And it will repay you
in full.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash