The Easier Eden

I wandered into a garden not born of storms. A gentler place with soft soil and no memory of blood in the roots. There, a figure formed from ease brushed my arm like wind does wheat, no thorns, no tremble, no past asking to be held. Her warmth asked nothing. Her eyes knew nothing. She just was. And for a breath, I wondered if love was supposed to be this clean. She pressed her lips to mine. And my heart recoiled, because even in false spring, I smelled the winter I left behind— the one I’d come to know, with all its silence and storms, where warmth is earned, not given. It wasn’t love. It was mercy disguised as passion. Relief wearing the mask of forever. And I—still tethered to the season I chose— stepped away. I told the wind: “This isn't where my roots belong.” I confessed to the sky and the quiet face of the earth, that even when thorns draw blood, some gardens are worth the bleeding. She cried out— not in heartbreak, but in disbelief. As if no one had ever chosen depth over ease. And someone, faceless— Maybe it was God— whispered through the hallway of my mind: “You've grown.” But I woke with ash on my tongue. Not from the kiss, but from the thought— the one I buried even from the dream: “What if love was never meant to hurt this much?” And still— I didn’t stay in Eden. I turned back to the winter where my heart is held with shaking hands, where the nights are long but the fire is real. Because comfort never taught me how to be brave. And I am brave. I chose the fire. I choose it still. Even in sleep, I would rather burn than bloom without it.