Second Horizon Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

There comes
a season
when survival
stops being
the assignment.

The body
keeps reaching
for alarms
that no longer ring.

Hands
still brace
for doors
already open.

It takes time
to believe
a life
can be built
for flourishing
instead
of escape.

She studies
prevention.
Not only
of illness,
but of diminishment.

She notices
how neglect
begins quietly.

How hope,
like muscle,
strengthens
before
it is needed.

She tends
her mornings
the way forests
protect watersheds.

One small habit
feeding
another
until peace
stops feeling
like luck
and begins
to resemble
ecology.

She imagines
the woman
waiting
many years ahead.

Not perfect.
Not finished.

Simply someone
whose life
has become
habitable.

She dresses
as though meeting her.

Speaks
as though introducing
the world
to her.

Chooses
what that woman
would choose
even
on ordinary Tuesdays.

This is not
performance.

It is rehearsal
for a future
already growing
like roots
beneath ground
no one else
can yet see.

And perhaps
that is faith.

Not certainty.

But stewardship
of a harvest
still invisible.

Yet already known
by the One
who planted it.