In the cracked marrow of old winters,
a single green blade dares the frost—
not rebirth, not resurrection,
but renovatio:

the slow, deliberate rewriting of ruin.
I have seen cities burn their own names
and rise again wearing stranger faces.
I have watched a black cat
sit in the empty apartment of a dead man
and claim the silence as his own kingdom.

So too the heart,
that stubborn architect,
takes the rubble of its former cathedrals
and builds smaller, truer chapels
where mercy can fit through the door.

Phillip, you who turn rage into pigment,
who date your poems into tomorrows
we have not yet earned—
you know this craft.
You tear the canvas,
spill the blood-reds,
then stitch light back into the wound
until the painting breathes.
Renovatio is not gentle.

It is the knife that removes the rot.
It is the fire that remembers
it was once a hearth.
And when the last ash settles,
something moves beneath it—
a pulse, a purr, a leap
like Chai across the midnight floor.
Old world, die cleanly.

New world, begin imperfectly.
We have time enough
for the slow miracle
of becoming

:: 12.23.2025 ::