Somewhere in the bloodline,
a flower grew sideways.
No one questioned the soil.
The seasons continued
as though nothing had happened.
I inherited the weather
without inheriting the names
of the storms.
A strange compass,
a language of windows,
the moon pulling at a tide
that wasn’t supposed to be mine.
For years,
I tried to teach the river
to run backwards.
Until the banks began to soften
and something green
appeared between the stones.
I wonder what survives us.
What lives in the roots
after the tree has disappeared.
What finds its way through the earth
without ever seeing the sun.
Perhaps nothing is new.
Perhaps the seed was always there,
sleeping beneath the frost,
waiting for a season
that may never come.
Holly Hughes
.