Stump
written by: Livia
It is odd to see the end of an eternity.
As a child, it was proof of the supernatural, a small seed of the books I was reading taking sprout in this world. My hometown was filled with antiquities and remains of a bygone era, and yet, only it stood as a testament to the kind passing of time. Its big leaning trunk home to dryads, the fence next to it bent giving way to its might, the branches that reached into the blue sky not in desperation but in quiet worship, the roots I never saw, but that held the stone steps I took together. The trunk was ancient, the leaves budding in spring were heralds of a new age.
The first time I returned to my hometown, you were gone. The stump is still there, the roots still lodged into the earth, sworn by quiet duty to endure, but you? You are gone.
Sometimes when we go past what is left, one of us will say: “It really is such a shame.”
And the other will echo: “Such a shame.”
An echo of eternity.
I am a MA student in Vienna, I am an introvert, I am an overthinker, I am a recently reconverted writer. I am a lover of coffee and pretty notebooks that I will never write in. I am a lover of the way the sunlight shines through my blinds, of dandelions fighting their way to bloom in a cracked pavement, the shape of the trees outside my window. I am a lover of how the ocean sparkles at high noon, of the way wet pavement reflects the light and of the sound of rain hitting my roof. I am a lover of the velvet-antlered doe and the two-sexed butterfly. I am a lover of sunsets, of sunrises, of clouds which look painted onto the big blue canvas of the sky. I am a lover of the way the fountain pen scratches the paper and the way paint brushes onto the canvas. I am a lover of art, big art, small art, good art, bad art, public art, private art, old art, new art, colourful art, monochrome art, art on my walls and art in my mind. I am a lover – I cannot help it. I am a lover through and through.
