At first, it looked dead.
A mess of old vines.
Twisted branches.
Things crossing over each other so tightly I couldn’t tell what was still alive—
and what had been gone for a long time.
That was what made me stop.
In black and white, the whole thing looks stripped down to bone.
No color to soften it.
No green to reassure you that something is still growing.
Just shape.
Shadow.
Tangles.
Old wood wrapped around older wood.
Somewhere inside all of that, something is still alive.
I think that’s what I like about it.
Nature doesn’t wait for everything dead to disappear before it starts again.
It grows around it.
Through it.
Over it.
The old damage stays.
The broken pieces stay.
Sometimes the dead things become part of the structure holding the living ones up.
There’s something very October about that.
Not death exactly.
The space between death and whatever comes next.
The point where something has already ended, but hasn’t disappeared.
Where decay and growth are touching.
Where you can’t quite tell which one you’re looking at anymore.
And maybe that’s why the picture feels a little unsettling.
Nothing is clean.
Nothing is finished.
Nothing has politely stepped aside to make room for what comes after it.
Everything remains tangled together.
Which, if I’m being honest, feels a lot more truthful than the idea that we always leave old things neatly behind.
Sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes we grow around them.
Sometimes they become part of us.
Sometimes the thing you thought was dead is simply waiting somewhere beneath everything else.
And sometimes—
you have to look closer to figure out which is which.
Until next time,
— Destiny
P.S. What’s something you thought was gone, only to realize part of it was still growing somewhere underneath? 🖤
