The Weight of Winter

I keep a small, dried sprig of lavender inside the pages of a book I rarely open. It was plucked years ago, when the frost was still biting at the edges of the garden, yet it held onto a stubborn, dusty scent of summer. There is a specific ache in witnessing something survive the cold—a quiet, shivering endurance that asks for nothing but time. We often mistake stillness for absence, forgetting that beneath the brittle bark and the frozen soil, there is a pulse waiting for the light to change its mind. To wait is a form of faith, a slow shedding of the grey layers we accumulated while the world was sleeping. We are all, in some measure, waiting for the thaw to reach our own hidden roots, wondering if we have held onto enough warmth to bloom again when the air finally turns soft. What remains of us when the long winter finally lets go?

Fidan Nazim Qizi has captured this delicate promise in her beautiful image titled Spring and the Tree. It carries that same quiet resilience I find in my pressed lavender, standing firm against the turning of the seasons. Does this scene remind you of a season you are currently waiting to leave behind?