short fiction · 2026-10-12

Rings

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet of the greenhouse, a seedling unfurls its first cotyledons, each pair a tentative breath toward light. I watch as it leans, not because it must, but because the sun invites a curve, and the stem thickens where pressure meets resolve. Rings form not in haste, but in the slow accumulation of seasons—each layer a record of drought, of rain, of the quiet insistence to stand taller than yesterday. I see my own years in its grain.