New Mexico

On the driest day,

beneath a sun that sears

what it should have warmed,

they root in silence —

not in soil,

but in the fractured mouths of stone.

Succulents, small and fierce,

learn early to drink from dust,

to hoard sweetness

in thick, secret skin,

to bloom where no one thought they would.

They do not cry for rain.

They do not flinch from heat.

They endure —

by folding themselves inward,

by growing sharp to survive,

by carrying life

in impossible places.

They wait —

not to be rescued,

but to be simply seen.