Confessions in the Orchard

I have a secret. I can hear the wind differently from anyone else. It doesn’t just whistle through trees or rattle against windows—it speaks to me. Sometimes it sings, a soft hum through the petals of flowers that have yet to bloom. I hear it now, in the lilies that line the edge of my garden, their white faces tilting toward the sun as if trying to memorize its warmth before it leaves them again. New flowers push up bravely, unfolding into the light, and I watch them, thinking maybe, just maybe, I can be as brave. But there’s a weight in me that does not lift with the sun. For me, spring is done before it even begins.

I walk between the rows of the apple orchard, letting my fingers brush against the blossoms. They are soft, fleeting, like the memory of a happiness I can’t quite hold. The wind moves around me, playful with the petals, sending them spiraling to the ground, and I know they will fall onto the flower box walls, onto the hard edges of things that cannot grow anymore. I envy the petals. They fall and are gone, accepted by the earth, while I keep holding on to something I cannot release.

I confess this: I am always the late bloom, the one who doesn’t know how to arrive on time for life’s promises. When the wind chased away the winter, when the first drops of spring rain began to wet the orchard paths, I remained standing under the bare branches, waiting for something to call me forward. I should have moved with the seasons, but I lingered. I lingered because I feared that moving forward would mean losing what I already had, even if what I had was only a shadow.

The orchard is quiet now, except for the wind. It presses through the blossoms, carrying the scent of damp earth, pollen, and sunlight. I want to tell it to stop, to leave me in my sorrow, but I know it will not. It has seen me this way before. I bend closer to a blossom, inhaling its soft sweetness, and I feel the ache of knowing I will not bloom as fully as these trees. They have their time. They are celebrated in the sunlight. I stand unnoticed.

And yet…there is a truth I cannot ignore. In the act of confessing, of speaking to the wind and the petals and the empty orchard paths, I begin to see a kind of growth. Maybe I am not meant to be celebrated. Maybe my bloom is quiet, subtle, barely there, but it is mine. Even as the petals fall and the season presses on without me, even as the old things slip through my fingers, I am learning to let go. I am learning that spring is not a single moment. It is a collection of breaths, of wind through blossoms, of quiet truths admitted to no one but the flowers themselves.

I confess, too, that I envy those who bloom openly, fully, without hesitation. But I also confess that I am tired of hiding from my own turning. I will not force myself into the sun too soon, but I will not hide forever. The wind will continue its song, the orchard will continue to wake, and I will continue to walk between the rows, learning, slowly, how to let myself be carried forward.

Spring is done for me in one sense. But perhaps it is only just beginning in another, hidden way, the kind of spring that no one notices but me. And perhaps that is enough.