They said he was doing better.
You can tell by the way
he now answers texts
three days late
instead of never.
By the groceries.
By the haircut.
By the practiced smile
that fits most rooms
Âif the lighting is kind.
They said growth looks good on a man.
No one mentioned
it grows back through the bone
like roots lifting stone.
He keeps a four-leaf clover
pressed inside an old book,
flat as a promise,
brown as old luck.
Found it young,
when magic still rented space
behind the eyes.
Back then, rain meant giants crying.
Roads led somewhere.
Empty fields held kingdoms.
Silence was only silence.
Now silence has trades.
It builds houses in the chest.
It rents every room.
It leaves the faucets running
with nothing.
There are mornings
he feels so lonely
he becomes furniture.
Chair-shaped spirit.
Lamp with a pulse.
A coat hung neatly
on the last hook of himself.
Still, he gets up.
This offends the dark.
ÂHe washes a cup.
Replies “haha” when required.
Pays bills.
Carries memories like wet dogs
that love him badly.
Sometimes he looks backward
and sees the boy he was
waiting at the tree line,
mud on his shoes,
holding that impossible clover
like a green star.
The boy does not wave.
The boy seems disappointed
to be right.
Still, there are changes.
He laughs for real now
once or twice a month.
He lets the sun touch his face
without apologizing.
He has learned
some wounds close crooked
and still close.
At night he plants small hopes
in cracked places,
a habit borrowed
from old Celtic ghosts
who trusted stones,
seasons,
and stubborn seeds.
By morning
something has usually moved.
Maybe light.
Maybe dirt.
Maybe him.
