The Backward Look

They crossed the gate. The ground beyond was rougher,  
seeded with stones no path had learnt to move.  
The wind pressed cloth against their bodies.  
The basket shifted weight between their hands.

Then Eve stopped first. Adam stopped beside her.  
They looked back without asking the other  
what the Garden meant or how to grieve it.

The eastern side still held the early light.  
Trees rose beyond the guardians, leaves moving  
in air whose measures did not know the pair.  
The river crossed the boundary underground,  
continuing beyond what they could see.

Eve wept for flowers she would not tend,  
for animals that would not know her leaving,  
for privacy she had not valued fully  
until an inward audience accompanied her,  
for work that once had ended when work ended,  
for Adam as he was before her influence,  
for herself before she made all limits evidence.

The guardians closed the inner path.  
The gate did not become a wall of hatred.  
It became a limit they could not interpret  
as temporary merely because it hurt.

The light within the Garden narrowed, not  
as though the Source withdrew from all the world,  
but as the place receded from possession.  

Eve said, “I will remember it imperfectly.”

Adam answered, “So will I.”

“We must not use  
our memories to rule what children make.”

“Nor hide the loss to make them grateful.”

“Nor tell them they inherit only guilt.”

“Nor tell them tools will bring the Garden back,  
nor tell them every tool repeats the Fall.”

They stood until the path behind them vanished.