The Green We Grow

The dead don't always stay buried. Maya had learned this the hard way—first when her mother's cancer returned, then when Marcus left her for someone more 'present,' and now, as she moved through her days like a **zombie**, hollowed out by grief and three years of fertility treatments that had yielded nothing but negative tests and dwindling hope.

She stood in her garden, fingers caked with soil, examining the **spinach** seedlings she'd planted on impulse. Something about their small, determined leaves pushing through darkness made her feel less alone. The garden was her only rebellion against the numbness that had consumed her since the miscarriage, since Marcus packed his things and said, 'I can't watch you disappear like this, Maya.'

'There you are!' Sarah's voice carried from next door. 'We're short a player for **padel**. Come play.' Sarah was everything Maya wasn't now—vibrant, uncomplicated, pregnant with her third child. The invitation hung in the air, a temptation to reconnect with the version of herself that used to laugh, used to live.

But looking at her dirt-streaked hands, at the spinach fighting its way toward light, Maya found herself shaking her head. 'Not today,' she called back, surprising herself. 'I have things growing here.'

She knelt back down, fingertips brushing the tender leaves, and for the first time in months, something real bloomed in her chest—not joy, not yet, but something like possibility. The dead didn't stay buried, she realized. But neither did the living. She was still here, still growing, still reaching toward whatever light remained.