The Shapes of Continuing

2026

There is a kind of life

that does not know how to give up.

It grows low, under stones, through the seam in a wall,

along the edge of something that tries to hold it back.

I have watched it come back without ceremony—

after the cutting, after the heat, after the long dry silence,

a small green thing begins again.

Not as it was.

Never quite as it was.

A stem bends and learns another direction.

A tree keeps the shape of an old wound.

Roots continue to grow where no one can see them.

I think of this when I think of us—

of the people who carry seasons inside themselves,

of those who have lost things and still make room for

something new,

of the parts of myself I thought had disappeared

until, quietly, they returned.

Maybe endurance is not holding on forever.

Maybe it is remaining long enough for change to find you.

And maybe resilience is not returning to who you once were—

but continuing to grow from the place where you broke.