No one sees
how long the green has held.
How it learned
to keep its softness guarded—
small spines at the edges,
just enough to say
not yet.
There is a kind of patience
that looks like stillness
from the outside.
Inside, something is gathering.
Color pressing forward.
A quiet yes
that will not be rushed.
And then—
not all at once—
a seam opens.
Red, where no one expected it.
Tender, where everything suggested otherwise.
Not because it was safe.
Because it was time.
—Iris Lennox
"When someone shows you who they are,
believe them."
I'll try.
Believe them the first time,
before an accumulation of words
or glances
offerings and
reactions—
retractions
or silence.
I'll try.
But what about trust?
Projection can be a weapon
unfair and blind
but so can trust.
So, what do we do with trust?
We've been told:
trust but verify
give to get
extend until there is a reason
not
to.
Surely, to give is to offer your
vulnerability
to open with an invitation to see—
the world through safety
and people through intimacy.
Exhale.
But what if they stab—
not with iron but with
words
or quiet
or gossip
or lies?
A lesson
wrapped in the progression
of choosing to trust and learning
wisdom.
And what of the mirror?
Is it still true that we are
who we are
every time?
The first time?
Time here is brief.
Experience anything
and you'll see—
they and
you and
we
can be the same
the first time,
the second time,
and again until the end,
or
we
and you
and me
can become.
So, believe who they are
but be gentle, too.
They can change.
So can you.
—Iris Lennox
In Krakow,
under the mutual agreement of cobblestones and centuries,
I stopped for lunch
because hunger, like history,
does not wait for proper context.
A restaurant offering pierogi
seemed more convincing
than the Hard Rock Cafe,
which had installed itself
with great confidence
in the wrong century.
A young woman greeted me.
Blond hair,
a practiced smile,
the unmistakable economy of someone
who has already lived this day once before.
We spoke.
Nothing of consequence—
which is to say,
everything necessary.
And then the thought arrived
with equal parts whimsy and angst:
why are our lives intersecting here?
She will remain—
serving, walking, returning,
knowing which streets curve and where to her laundry.
I will leave—
to my kitchen,
my coffee,
my purple toothbrush,
which performs its duties faithfully
without ever asking where it is in the world.
Meanwhile—
each of us continues
as the center of a system
no telescope has fully mapped:
families in orbit,
memories in storage,
songs that arrive unannounced,
conversations that replay
with slight editorial improvements.
Entire infrastructures
built without engineers.
Whole histories
proceeding without witnesses.
We sit across from one another
for less than an hour—
long enough to exchange currency,
not long enough to exchange lives.
She brings the food.
I thank her.
This is recorded nowhere.
And yet—
somewhere in the vast accounting
of everything that happens
and is immediately forgotten,
our meeting persists
as a minor, precise event—
like a crumb on a table,
like a word almost remembered,
like the brief and mutual illusion
that we have interrupted each other’s lives.
Meanwhile,
her life continues in all directions.
Mine does too.
Both of us,
at intervals,
certain of our centrality.
Both of us,
entirely surrounded
by things we will never know.
—Iris Lennox
Despite the absence of any reliable signal—
no drooping worthy of alarm, no crisping at the edges,
no official declaration of thirst—
the plant insists on requiring water
at some precise and undisclosed moment.
Its leaves offer only minor adjustments,
a change so slight it could be attributed
to lighting, mood, or coincidence—
the kind of evidence that refuses to testify.
And yet, water must be given.
Too early, and the roots object in silence.
Too late, and the same silence deepens,
as though agreement had been reached
without my participation.
The purple one presents no difficulty.
Six blooms at once,
as if it had already reviewed the conditions of the room
and signed without revision.
The pink one remains undecided.
One bloom, paused indefinitely,
neither withdrawn nor committed—
a position I recognize.
There are, apparently, forms of life
that do not improve under observation.
This complicates matters.
My grandmother knew when to water them.
Not through measurement, not by schedule,
and certainly not by consulting the leaves for clarity.
She stood near them, which was enough.
I stand near them with coffee.
Again with afternoon tea.
The water disappears from the tray
without acknowledgment or correction.
No confirmation is issued.
The purple one continues,
untroubled by my involvement.
The pink one—
after a period of complete inaction,
with no visible shift in circumstance—
opens.
—Iris Lennox
Nostalgia is slippery
like a water snake.
One deliberate squeeze
and there it went.
Exit upon exit
if you look at it.
Look away,
and beware it's return.
A mower hums somewhere
beyond the houses,
a duet of humming and bass,
moving through the air
because afternoons
have always sounded this way.
A whisper of perfume
passes—
familiar, specific—
caught for a second
in the space between two steps.
A child runs ahead,
hair lifting and falling
across her forehead,
light moving with it,
time carried in the motion
like once
before
with a different name.
The body looks at its wrist.
What time is it—
noon or
1987?
A recognition
without language,
already underway.
Memory follows
in pieces.
You reach toward it—
toward the full arrangement,
the exact alignment
of what it felt like
to stand there.
Who you were.
Who they were.
Where, again?
And, why?
Then
without warning
it arrives.
Complete.
Immediate.
Undivided.
Distance closes.
The past takes its place
inside the present,
fully formed,
in at least two of your senses.
For a moment.
Then it releases.
You only have yourself
to blame.
Next time,
look at it sideways.
— Iris Lennox
I have to hold the book closer.
Not because I need stronger reading glasses,
though that may also be true.
Just small adjustments,
little by little,
the words end up on my nose.
Hello, words.
I tilt the page toward the window,
hoping there’s something to borrow.
There isn’t.
I keep reading anyway.
It feels like I’ve stayed somewhere
slightly longer than I was meant to,
like a guest who hasn’t noticed
everyone else has gone home.
I look up.
The room has already changed its mind—
about me?
About itself?
The corners are gone.
The floor is still there, I think.
I don’t remember the light leaving.
I only notice that it has.
The book is still open in my hands.
East of Eden, halfway through a sentence,
continuing on without me,
like a train speeding silently,
and I am still on the platform.
I could turn on the lamp.
Way over there.
I try to read one more sentence,
but I think I’ve lost the plot.
Who is “dknfihd,” anyway?
—Iris Lennox
This one did not arrive gently.
The edges remember something—
a pressure,
a folding back,
as if each petal had to argue
for its place in the light.
Nothing about it is smooth.
The ruffles hold.
The color deepens where it was once hidden.
Even the softness has weight to it.
You could say it opened.
But that would miss
what it endured to become open.
There are days
the sky lowers itself without warning,
and everything living is asked
to stay.
No explanation is offered.
No promise of outcome.
Just weather.
Still, something in the root
keeps drawing what it can.
Still, something in the stem
lifts what it has been given.
And when it is finally visible—
the pale, steady unfolding—
no one sees the storms.
Only the shape they left behind.
Only the quiet fact
that it did not close again.
Only the way it stands
as if the breaking of it
was never the end.
—Iris Lennox
Iris Lennox 