If Spring Had Witnessed Winter

by Sehajpreet Kaur Lakhyan

If spring had witnessed winter,

It would not arrive so easily.

It would hesitate,

At broken windows still holding

Fragments of old light.

At empty streets,

That once carried footsteps

Now remembered only by silence.

At names,

That tremble differently on

Unfamiliar tongues,

As if language itself has

Learned caution.

It would notice,

How even the air changes

When a place has learned loss.

How some walls stop

Feeling like shelter

And start feeling like memory.

How some soil

Forgets how to fold roots

Without letting them slip away.

And how people,

Even then.

Still correct the pronunciation of their names,

Softly, patiently,

As if holding onto something

The world keeps trying to reshape.

It would understand,

That not every silence means peace

And not every stillness means healing.

That some people learn

To carry lives

Without making noise about it.

And yet,

It would still come.

Not loudly, not whole,

Not pretending nothing

Ever broke.

But carefully,

As if apologizing for being late,

To everything that mattered.

Touching the world

Like it is fragile history still breathing.

Like every scarred place

Deserves to be approached with gentleness

Instead of certainty.

And maybe that is enough.

Because even a hesitant spring,

Does not erase winter.

It refuses it.

And in that refusal,

The world quietly learns

That nothing broken was ever finished.