After we are gone, an orchard stands
On ground we only meant to lend,
Fruit we never lived to taste
Still ripens past our given end.

I've spent this whole record asking
What a person leaves behind,
Turns out it was never one large answer,
It was scattered, intertwined—
A carving, a sapling, a pencil notch,
A tune the wind picked up and spread,
Small and quiet, never towering,
But every one of them well-fed.

So let it be the rooted things,
Let it be the branch that bends,
Let it be the fruit that ripens
Long after planting hands.

I found the doorframe's rings grown over,
Where every pencil mark had been,
Someone's palm had passed across it
More than I could count or ken.
That's the mark that outlives measuring,
Not the pencil, just the wear,
Proof that someone stood here tending
Long enough for growth to dare.

I don't need a statue in the yard.
I need the orchard to keep growing
past whatever season I was given to it.

So when I go, don't carve too much,
Don't say more than what is true,
Just say I tended what I planted,
And that it kept on growing through.