Nettles

honesty with care

First Light

The dawn does not bargain.
It comes, a quiet invasion,
spilling gold on the sill,
asking nothing.

It finds the dust motes,
the half-empty cup,
the lines etched by worry
around your sleeping eyes.

It does not judge.
It simply illuminates.

1

Foundations

We built our house on fault lines,
mistook the tremors
for the beating of a shared heart.

Now, the walls have hairline fractures,
maps of conversations
we never finished.

We trace them with our fingers,<
two geologists of regret,<
studying the slow, inevitable drift.

2

Unsent

The letters I don't send
are the most honest.

They live in a blue folder,
a cemetery of syntax,
where every comma is a pause
I couldn't take,
every period a door
I couldn't close.

They are heavier than stone.

3

The Gardener

She speaks of patience,
of waiting for the stubborn bulb
to believe in the sun.

She pulls the weeds,
she calls them by name—
doubt, fear, yesterday—
and lays them in the light to dry.

Her hands are chapped, earth-stained,
the hands of a god
with a manageable portion of the world.

4
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