The earth receives her patient hand,
and yields, as if it knows her well—
this quiet labor, year by year,
this tending none but she can tell.

She kneels where sunlight gathers soft
upon the brim that shades her eyes;
her tools lie scattered in the grass,
like small, forgotten histories.

A ladybug, with careless grace,
alights upon her denim knee—
she marks it not with word or smile,
yet feels it, faintly, as memory.

For thought, once stirred by turning soil,
will wander where it has been led—
to summers sealed in vanished breath,
to names the living do not speak,
yet linger with the dead.

There were hands that once knew hers—
or thought they did, in fleeting claim;
there were vows made light as morning air,
and hearts that would not stay the same.

She does not curse what came to pass,
nor seek to call those hours back—
regret, like root beneath the ground,
runs deep, but follows its own track.

And still—she plants.

As though the fragile, tender bloom
might answer something time denied;
as though tomorrow, gently kept,
could yet restore what life untied.

The soil is pressed. The moment stills.
The sun ascends without demand.

And in that pause—so slight, so full—
what passes through her quiet mind
no eye nor voice has ever known.

Yet one thought lingers, soft and near—

is she thinking about me?