The Withering Garden

Title: The Withering Garden

Once, we tended a garden. It was lush and wild, filled with color and life, the kind of beauty that can only grow from shared care and boundless hope. The flowers weren't perfect, but they were ours, and each bloom felt like proof of something deeper--something unspoken but understood.

The seasons changed, as they always do, but this time the change felt different. The garden began to fade, the vibrant hues dulling into something quieter, something tired. The paths we once walked together now feel overgrown, and the soil beneath our feet no longer holds the promise it once did.

I still walk those paths, but they are empty now. She is here, but not in the way she once was. She stands at the edge of the garden, her back to me, her form catching the light in ways I can't help but admire. She glows, more radiant than I have ever seen her, as though she has discovered some secret spring of beauty and strength.

And yet, in her eyes, I see shadows. She moves with a purpose that feels more like escape than fulfillment. Her beauty, striking as it is, seems like a mask for something deeper--a weariness I can't touch, let alone heal. It's as if the brighter she becomes, the heavier her heart grows.

I kneel among the brittle stalks and faded blooms, my hands searching for some sign of life. The earth feels cold, hard, as though it no longer believes in the possibility of growth. I wonder if I waited too long to tend to it, if the life we built has been left too long to falter.

And I wonder, too, about myself. My hands, once steady and sure, feel clumsy and weak now. My reflection startles me: softer lines where strength once was, a figure bent under the weight of years. I am not the man I was when we planted this garden, and I don't know if I can be again.

She glances at me sometimes, her expression unreadable. I want to reach for her, to remind her of the garden we once tended, to ask if she sees what I see. But the words stick in my throat, and I am left with only the sound of the wind through the dry leaves.

Still, I stay. Because the garden was ours. Because even in its withered state, I feel its echoes--the laughter, the promises, the dreams. Because I don't know how to leave a place where so much of me is rooted.

And because I see her, radiant and weary, and wonder if somewhere beneath her glow and her shadows, she is searching for the same thing I am: a bloom stubborn enough to rise again.