Breathe with the stones; thyme stitches forgotten summers into the wind we hold.

We climb and the world becomes a long breath,
the path a spine of granite, the light a careful hand.
The air carries wild thyme from somewhere we cannot
point to, as if memory itself is blooming underfoot.

The stones tilt toward us, like listening friends.
We leave words in their shadows and take the wind
back into our lungs: damp pine, sunlight, the
soft click of distant bells carried by rock.

We hold the trail against us, cool and deliberate,
as the slope confesses its secrets, one at a time:
a lizard bask, a moth land on a shoulder, the
length of a shadow pulling the afternoon out longer.

You whisper and the thyme answers, faint as
forgiveness, a scent that has walked in from
past summers and decided to stay. It threads
the day together, a green seam no one can see.

At the ridge, the world opens like a book, and
we do not need to read