A Rebirth Without a Funeral

She moved into the apartment not because it felt like home, but because it was far from reality, away from the things that once gave her a reason to breathe. The walls dull, soulless, and barren, receiving the warm sunlight, smiles, love, or rage equally; flat, hollow murmuring. Outside, the city roared, screamed, shouted, but inside it was just a girl staring into voids and unpacking silently, yet sadly. Slowly, she tore the tape away and opened the boxes, one after the other, creating a heap of her clothes, essentials, one above the other. The air held frustration she dared not show. Her hands stopped at the one box that was rather a recollection, a heart-wrenching box. Holding the books she once read with devotion, devouring the text, with small notes, she once wrote. The other held old sketchbooks, brushes, and pallets. That girl felt like someone she had known long ago, someone who had died quietly without a funeral. She used to think she'd make something of herself. But dreams, she’d learned, don’t shatter; they fade and perhaps we engulf them deep down, like drinking poison. Dissolving into small compromises: one delayed project, one missed chance, one more "perhaps next year." And so, she stopped trying... She worked, scrolled, cooked, she breathed, she had forgotten how to live. But on most nights, she caught herself staring at her own reflection and wondering, when exactly did I stop being alive? The one morning she saw it, between the cracks came out a sprout, a fragile, young, tender one; it wasn't supposed to be there. How was it there? She almost stepped on it. She poured a little water over it, without thinking. And the next day, it was still there, like someone who refuses to leave after one kind act. So she kept watering it, first habitually, then ritually, slowly, steadily; her only conversation was with the universe, that young, tender seedling. Unintentionally, it changed her, something flickering within her. Life within her had taken a minute shift. She started opening the curtains each morning, letting the light in. She cleaned the dust off her sketchbooks. Not to draw, not yet; just to touch the past without flinching. And slowly, her days began to breathe again. Weeks passed. The sprout grew. One day it bloomed, not grandly, not brightly; just a small, white flower trembling in the wind. She stood there for a long time, staring at it. It was so insignificant, and yet, somehow, it had done what she never had; it had grown through concrete. Cracking something within her. She wept; not for what she'd lost, but for what she'd neglected; the small, quiet beginnings that never seemed big enough to matter. The life that wanted to bloom in simple things. She took out one of her old sketchbooks that night. Not to chase a career. Not to rebuild a dream. Just to draw that flower. Every line trembled, uneven but alive. Writing, it's the little things, always, always. And there she wept, cried out loud, screamed, took every ache out, mourned every sorrow; finally gave a rebirth to the one who had left without a funeral. And after days, months, years, she slept soundly. The void had filled, and the first step was taken.