Window Box Elegy

The window box is dead.

No gentle word for it.

Just skeletal stems, hydrangea

brown and brittle, clawing at air.

Remembered the green, the hopeful buds,

the hours spent loosening soil, whispering

encouragement to roots.

It felt important then.

Now, a tangled mat of what was.

A dusty, silent accusation against the glass.

The rain slides off it, useless.

Nothing to revive. Just the dry crunch

if I were to touch it.

And I don't.