The Dandelion Theory

The afternoon was the kind that makes you slow down without deciding to. Barefoot in a field of wildflowers, the sun low and warm, the kind of light that makes you stop moving. I’d wandered off the main trail without thinking about it, the way you do when something pulls you sideways and you follow.

And there by a cluster of stones, growing where it had no business growing, was a single dandelion.