The Guardian of the Threshold © 2026 

By Laura Marco | www.lauramarco.es 

The door was still there. 

It was not just any door, even if the world insisted on treating it as one. It was old, rough, carved by wounds no paint and no prayer could ever conceal. The wood was cracked like the skin of an elderly hand, and the iron, holding its hinges, seemed to weep rust in silence. If one stopped long enough to truly look, they could see in it the trace of countless days: rain that struck without mercy, sun that burned without care, nights that leaned into its shadow as if seeking shelter. 

But the door remained. 

And in front of it, every morning, the woman appeared. 

She did not arrive in haste, nor in fear. She did not walk like someone escaping, nor like someone searching. She walked like someone accepting. Like someone who knows fate is not something to argue with—only something to cross… or to stand before, at its edge. Her steps were calm, almost solemn, as if the ground beneath her feet were an altar worn down by centuries of invisible pilgrims. 

She never touched the knob. Never tried to open it. 

Not because she could not, but because she knew opening it would change nothing. The door did not hide paradise on the other side. No answer. No late salvation. It was, instead, a symbol. A boundary. A reminder that some things time leaves behind, and others time drags forward without asking forgiveness. 

The woman would stop at the threshold and look. Sometimes into the dark interior hinted at through the cracks; sometimes up at the sky, as if measuring the hours by the colour of the clouds. She stood still, her basket resting against her leg, as though the entire world were a stage and she had learned the hardest role of all: to remain. There with her basket and the asparagus cutting. 

She was a witness to time. 

Not the gentle kind of time, not the time celebrated in birthdays or trapped in photographs. No. She was a witness to true time—the kind that cannot be tamed. The kind that devours. 

Time was a silent animal. It did not roar. It did not bare its teeth. It did not need to announce itself. It arrived like dampness, seeped into walls, into beams, into memory. It invaded everything without raising its voice. And by the time you noticed it, it was already too late: the roof had sagged, the ground had cracked, the paint had surrendered, the flowers had died without anyone mourning them. 

Around her, the stones of the old building crumbled as if they were tired of carrying history. Edges collapsed slowly. Walls leaned with tragic patience. There was a smell of dust and past, of things that once had names and were now only decaying matter. 

The world was growing old. She had learned that everything we love wears down. 

Bodies wear down. Promises wear down. Laughter wears down. Places wear down. People wear down. 

Even memories wear down. 

At first, she believed memory was a kind of eternity. She thought that if she held a moment inside her heart, it would remain untouched—like an object locked inside a glass box. But it was not true. Over the years, memory also frayed. Faces blurred. Voices mixed together. Details evaporated like water on sun-heated stone. 

And still… she kept them. She kept them in her basket. 

No one knew exactly what she carried inside. Perhaps no one dared to ask. It could have been dried flowers. Letters. Photographs. Pieces of cloth. An old handkerchief. A key. A broken doll. A piece of bread hardened like the winters of long ago. Small things, meaningless to the world, but immense to a heart that refused to forget. 

She was not the guardian of the door because she believed the door could be saved. Nor because she believed the building could be restored. She was its guardian because someone had to look. Someone had to remain long enough to say—if only in silence: this existed. 

Sometimes, when the wind blew hard, the door creaked. And that creak sounded like an old voice trying to speak. In those moments, the woman would lift her head as if hearing a name called from far away. As if part of her still expected the past to return something, even if it was only a sigh. 

But the past never returns. The past only weighs. The woman knew this. 

And yet… there was in her a kind of hope.

Not an innocent hope, not the bright hope written in youthful poems. It was a small hope, almost invisible, like an ember hidden beneath ash. A hope that did not promise to save everything, but refused to accept that everything had been meaningless. 

It was the hope that something—however small—might endure. 

She could not stop time. No one can. But she could accompany the ending. She could watch decay without turning away. She could hold—if only with her soul—the dignity of what was falling apart. 

It allows us to exist, if only for an instant. It allows us to love. It allows us to dream. It allows us to create beauty, however fragile. 

And that instant, however small, matters. 

Not because it is eternal, but because it was real. 

The woman removed her hand from the door. She looked down at her basket. She smiled faintly, like someone accepting a truth both bitter and sweet. Then she turned and began to walk away slowly, leaving the threshold behind. 

Not with certainty of returning. Not with certainty that anything would change. 

And as she disappeared into the distance, the door creaked once more. 

As if it were saying goodbye. 

As if time itself, for a second, had recognized her. 

The wind lifted her hair, which moved like a pale wave, and she, with steady steps, walked away, knowing she would return, again and again, because that door was part of her, like her breath, like the weight of her memories, like the time that, though it devours, never truly leaves her. And so, she faded into the evening, like a memory that still waits for its moment to return. 

She is guarding what time cannot carry:
the last memory before silence.

“Among Roses, the Forgotten” © 2025 

By Laura Marco | www.lauramarco.es 

She lingered in that narrow space between shadow and light,
a quiet presence suspended in a moment that refused to fade.
She wasn’t looking at the world; her gaze sank into a place
far deeper—
a silent corner of memory where something once cherished
still smouldered softly. 

Light settled over her like a half-spoken secret,
tracing the curve of her face with a tenderness
that felt almost like longing.
It didn’t illuminate to reveal her—
it illuminated to remember her. 

In her hands rested a rose—
not merely a flower, but a confession in disguise.
She held it with the care of someone
who has loved something fragile
and fears the ache of losing it again.
The petals, weary and luminous,
seemed to guard every word
she had never dared to speak. 

The darkness behind her was not empty;
it was memory made visible.
A quiet echo of what had slipped away
and yet remained, stubborn and soft,
woven into the air around her. 

She did not pose.
She did not try to be seen.
She existed in that suspended breath—
a moment caught between holding on
and letting go.

And then the truth of the image unfolded:
she was the rose.
The one someone had forgotten.
The one still waiting to be remembered.
The one who, despite the melancholy
gathered around her like dusk,
still found a way to shine.

It is about the fear of falling, the vertigo of finally seeing ourselves tumble to that luminous place that awaits us, madly always being there. The luminosity inside the arch is beautiful enough, and relaxing enough to stop us from worrying all the time. Nonsense, in short, she did not feel any worry, nor despair about the inevitable end, it was written in her destiny. On the contrary, what really drove her mind to despair was the daily choice between those two presences, those two lights, cold and warm, good and bad, ambiguous and concrete. Present everywhere, even in the stone, in the shape of a current of air, a soft whisper. Who would know.

Precisely at that moment, the vertigo she felt did not come from the bright whiteness beyond the stone step that would precipitate her final fall, nor from taking wrong footsteps without balance on her high heels either. Tenderly she paused, closed her eyes and felt the energies enveloping her mind and senses, playing around her neck and hair. In short brief moments the sweet music, embraced her chest, warming her memories, nest of so many moments of cheerfulness... that honied melody was undoubtedly the best path to follow and suddenly... she felt that attractive cold. A whispering freshness that cleared all senses, attracted their attention and at every instant that viperine tongue whispered her things… don’t you know! it usually puts ideas in people's minds, there the serpent dances its cold dance, twisting in beautiful curls, ringlets of evil.

Could common conscience forget that the insignificant time of mortals knocks every day on its wandering, not only on the woman’s walk and that of everyone as well, forcing us in this pace to dance between the two opposites: what is good and what is bad. At every moment differently rhythmed, choosing and living.

What small portion is worthy to be retained? her smile, being it the sincerest, not only determined but full of acceptance; In the tedious passing of time, no one stays forever at one extreme, we all dance between good and evil, at every minute, hour, day that we are given as a present to live, then we have to choose, whether we like it or not.

Step by step, minute after minute her smile curdled among the great human condition. Time passes, dances and so did she, in her truth fullest way.

Don't you know that we, all humans, at last fall into our immeasurable whiteness without remedy, beyond that infinite jump... so, dance between good and evil! without any suffering... it is our condition of life, our humanity.

Can’t even remember when words caught my attention, but I suppose it was at an early age. At school, one day there was a class essay competition, the topic - the discovery of America - and mine was chosen, now I wonder why and I understand the reasons... not only did I talk about the caravels and the crew and the land that their eyes saw, but I got into the role of the cockroaches or rats that also travelled in the caravel, what did they feel? What did they smell or hear?

That's where my admiration for words and thoughts began. After those years of childhood, they have always accompanied me in life. The words chosen are very important, they can even heal or cure, amaze or frighten. Wrapped in words, that's how I've always walked through life, giving form to soul and words, to thoughts, to smells, to lights... with me, everything slows down in the stories, there are readers who don't like it when descriptions go too slowly, it's understandable, but I would modestly stay to live in a description forever and there I would quietly spend my moments.

The image faithfully reflects my great passion in life: between life and words without half measures, without major artifice. No archetypes, no clichés.

I hope to continue like this until my mind can bear it, a hug!.