09/12/2025
Still She Blooms
In the quiet edges of the world,
where sunlight trembles through the leaves,
wildflowers bloom,
fragile, untamed, unnoticed by most.
They do not need orderly gardens,
nor the careful hands of tending.
They rise from cracks in stone,
from soil cracked by sorrow,
from places we thought barren.
Once, I held a love like that,
delicate petals pressed against my chest,
bright as morning, fleeting as breath.
I did not see the storms ahead,
the frost that would shatter my heart,
the wind that would scatter all that I held dear
Yet still, they bloom,
these tiny flames of color,
daring the world to look,
to remember that even in absence,
beauty persists.
And I, too,
learn to bend without breaking,
to grow where I have been wounded,
to bloom quietly
in the spaces left behind.
~ 'Still She Blooms'' by Spirit of a Hippie
✍️ Mary Anne Byrne
~ Art by Lori Portka
