She Did Not Stop

She did not stop when the season was long.

She did not stop when the fruit was slow and the ground was hard and the work looked smaller than it felt.

She did not stop when no one was watching, which was most of the time.

She was not heroic about it. She was tired, often. She doubted, sometimes. She needed help more than she admitted.

But she returned. That is what it looked like: not grand continuance but quiet return.

The prayer after the silence. The faithfulness after the failure. The open hand after the long clenching.

She did not stop.

And in the places she had tended without knowing if anything was growing, things were growing.

They were always growing. She just could not see them yet.