When she was born,
her mother placed a flower by the window—
small, unsure,
petals folded like tiny hands learning to pray.
“Watch,” her mother said,
“it will always turn toward the light.”
The girl grew in seasons.
In spring, she ran barefoot through wet grass,
laughing with a mouth full of sky.
Her mother braided her hair like winding stems,
tucking courage behind her ears
the way you tuck soil around fragile roots.
In summer, the girl stretched taller.
Questions bloomed inside her—
Who am I?
How far can I reach?
Sometimes she forgot the window,
forgot the flower turning faithfully toward the sun.
But her mother stood steady as earth,
quietly watering her with patience,
whispering, “Grow anyway.”
Autumn came in amber tones.
Leaves of childhood loosened their grip.
The girl felt the first frost of heartbreak,
petals bruised by words she couldn’t unhear.
She wilted for a while,
folded inward.
Her mother didn’t force her open.
She only moved the flower closer,
tilted the blinds,
let the light fall gently across her daughter’s face.
“Even in cold,” she said,
“roots remember how to hold on.”
And winter—
winter taught her quiet strength.
Not every bloom is loud.
Some survive by resting,
by trusting the soil that cannot be seen.
Her mother became the garden wall,
shielding her from sharp winds,
reminding her that bare branches
still carry life inside them.
Years passed.
The girl stepped beyond the window,
into wide, unmeasured fields.
She carried a flower in her chest now—
its stem woven from her mother’s voice,
its petals shaped like every sacrifice
she never noticed until she was grown.
When storms bend her,
she feels the roots beneath her feet.
When sunlight warms her face,
she turns toward it without thinking.
Because a mother is the soil and the sun,
the quiet hand that steadies the stem.
And a daughter is the flower that leans,
again and again,
toward the light she was taught to trust.
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