I plant beans the way Mamaw taught me
three to a hill, like sisters
leaning on one another in hard times.
She’d say, Keep the good seed,
even if the season’s cruel.
I didn’t know then she meant more than crops.

We hold onto things differently here.
Not in glass cases just to gaze upon,
but in the way we say a name,
the way we hang a quilt
so it catches morning sun,
the way we grasp hands and 
whisper secrets across rows. 

I’ve written women into pages
they were once kept from,
carried stories in baskets 
with kale and failure and hope.
I teach my children the names of trees,
not just for science, but survival.
They need to know what heals.

Power doesn’t knock here — 
it paves.
Digs deep.
Calls it progress.
But the land remembers who tended it.

And I remember too.
Each time I put my hands in soil,
I am speaking back to every silence.