8. Wind

She stroked the cat

with her toes.

She was a witch.

A healer.

A knower of things

that don’t need words.

“You don’t understand,”

she said —

not angry,

just aware.

Her spirituality wasn’t belief.

It was texture.

Warmth.

Breath.

Her pain had turned into wings.

Not to escape —

but to stay

without breaking.

“Maybe we’ll meet again,”

she wrote,

“in a few years.”

And walked,

barefoot

in a dress that caught the air,

through a park

that wasn’t a park —

but a place

between places.