from around the garden,
in nooks and crannies where
the snails and slugs and spiders create
homes in the muddy dark.
beneath rotting planks
of trees from storms past
and the wind that seduced them
from the foundations of roots
that twisted through the deep earth,
around the worms that burrowed
and the soil that held dear
the decomposed bodies of the ones that breathed.

the garden where I made my rounds,
where the words never came out the way
they echoed in my head.
the garden where I stopped to smell
the overgrowth and rot.
the spider webs, and flies that became
liquid from the venom of their starved captors.
I stopped to smell the blackness that the sun hid.
I stopped to live out my humanity while I lost my words.