The walls had forgotten warmth long ago. Stone upon stone, the world had learned to survive without tenderness. Behind the iron windows there were no voices, no music, only the silence of abandoned rooms and the heavy scent of humidity gathering in the air before the rain. The wind moved softly through the ruined walls, carrying the cold breath of an unfinished evening beneath a restless sky.

At her feet rested the worn case of the instrument, shaped almost like a small forgotten suitcase. It seemed to belong both to music and to departure, as though she could place inside it not only the fragile violin of branches she carried in her hands, but also the weight of her own leaving. As if part of her had already prepared to walk away from that abandoned place — but not before trying to leave behind something beautiful.

And yet there was something in her still unwilling to surrender completely. She lifted her gaze toward the sky, not like someone searching for escape, but like someone listening carefully to something the rest of the world could no longer hear.

In her hands she carried an impossible instrument.

It was made of rough branches, worn strings and forgotten fragments, fragile pieces gathered from a broken world. But the improvised instrument did not feel like poverty. It felt like will. As if even in a ruined world there still remained a human need to create music, to imagine, to lift something beautiful toward the sky.

For a moment her fingers hesitated above the strings. The kite trembled softly in the distance, suspended between the storm and the fading light, holding within it a fragile but stubborn optimism — the quiet belief that something can still rise, even when everything around it seems to fall apart. Then she played.

The first melody emerged almost invisibly, blending with the wind, climbing slowly through the abandoned stones and empty windows. The notes rose toward the sky as though searching for somewhere beyond the ruins, somewhere untouched by bitterness or silence.

And strangely… the broken world listened.

The air softened. The walls no longer seemed entirely empty. Even the cold light resting upon the stones began to feel warmer, as if the world itself had paused for a brief instant to remember what tenderness once felt like.

Because sometimes hope does not arrive through grand gestures. Sometimes it begins with someone who refuses to let beauty disappear.

Someone willing to create meaning from fragments. To offer music where only silence remained.
To leave behind one small act of light before walking away.

Inside the house, time moved with the quiet repetition of familiar days.
The air carried the warm scent of old stone and aged wood, a silent fragrance that spoke of routine and refuge. Her hands moved almost without thought, repeating gestures learned over years: arranging, cleaning, preserving the stillness of a world protected within thick and trusted walls.

The walls held the coolness of shade, and the worn floor responded beneath her steps with a muted whisper.

But that morning, something was different.

It was not a clear sound nor a defined voice.
Only a suggestion: a thin breeze slipping through the half-open door, brushing her skin with an unexpected freshness. It carried a new scent — damp, vegetal — as if the earth itself had begun to breathe again after dryness. A different light filtered into the room, tracing soft lines across the stone and awakening shadows that had long rested in silence.

Something outside seemed to pulse with greater intensity.

She paused.

For the first time in a long while, she stopped doing what she had always done and lifted her gaze. She sensed the air shifting, the light touching her face with a gentler warmth. In that silence, she perceived something deeper: the world beyond her walls was still moving — filled with unseen voices, quiet needs, and lives that also knew thirst.

And she understood that suffering does not belong to one place alone.
Like thirst, it spreads quietly, waiting for hands willing to soothe it.

So, she took the most precious thing she had.

Water.

The vessel rested in her hands with a familiar and steady weight. The cool surface of the clay brushed against her fingers, reminding her of its simple and essential value. She felt the faint movement of water within, a soft contained sound — like a silent promise.

To give drink to the thirsty.
To accompany the weary.
To offer comfort without hesitation.

It was not a grand gesture, but a deeply human one.

And she crossed the threshold.

The outer air wrapped around her with a new brightness. Light touched her skin, more open and luminous than inside, while a gentle current moved her hair, carrying the distant murmur of life. Before her stretched an unknown space, filled with possible faces, with stories not yet visible but already real.

She did not yet know whom she would meet.

But she knew she could not close the door again without offering what she carried.

For sometimes, true awakening begins when we leave the safety of our walls and step toward others, carrying in our hands what may soothe the thirst of the world.

PETRIFIED © 2026

By Laura Marco | www.lauramarco.es

She remained beside the stone for so long that she eventually learned its silence. Day after day it was the same. The same light brushing the ruins, the same unmoving horizon, the same place beside the rock. With time, repetition stopped being a gesture and slowly became a destiny.

The force of habit quietly closed every door. Doing the same thing every day. Remaining in the same place. Never looking beyond. Never imagining another life. Without noticing, something inside her began to harden. First, she stopped asking questions.
Then she stopped looking. Finally, she stopped feeling.

When a life stops moving within, the body begins to learn the stillness of the things
that surround it. Habit settled over her like ancient dust. Routine anchored her to the landscape.

Until one day she was no longer a woman sitting beside a stone.

She was simply another stone among the ruins.

But Nature rarely accepts that something alive should fade without resistance. There is a quiet justice within life: what is beautiful, what was meant to feel, to love and to move through the world, should not remain forgotten beside a ruin.

So, Nature comes to wake her. Not with force, but with patience.

The wind arrives first. It circles the stone, slips through the cracks, and lifts her golden hair. It stirs it gently, as if tickling her face and neck, reminding her that movement still exists.

Then the birds appear. They cross the sky behind her as if following the same invisible current that moves her hair. It is almost as if they wished to catch those golden strands and lift them away from the ruins, away from the stillness.

Sometimes the sun warms the stone. Sometimes a light rain falls across her silent face.

Life insists in many ways. And one day something breaks inside the silence.

Her eyes slowly open, still heavy after the long sleep of habit. In front of her, her own golden hair moves in the air like a small zebra of light dancing before her gaze.

She remains seated, slightly bewildered, watching those strands pass before her eyes,
as if the world itself were calling her again.

She looks at the landscape. And then she realizes the path is still there.

A road that continues beyond the ruins, beyond the stone she believed for so long to be her destiny.

Perhaps she missed the departing carriage.  Perhaps the journey began without her.

But the road still exists. And now she must find the way to rise, to recognize the path, and finally return to her own life.

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!.