Fractured Lullaby

She was called serenity once – the last keeper of the in-between. Not alive, not gone, just suspended where the roots decide. One night the garden grew tired of waiting. It reached up through her porcelain skin, split her open like fine china left too long in the frost, and wrapped her in its own veins. Now she sleeps with black roses in her hair and glowing seeds in her cracks. Her fingers still reach for something she forgot to name. The garden hums. It always does when something beautiful refuses to die completely.