12/28/2025
The sun beat down on the white, cracked plain like a relentless spotlight, turning the salt‑crusted earth into a mirror of sky. A lone figure stood beside a rickety two‑wheel cart, its wooden frame groaning under the weight of mismatched cargo: rusted jerry cans, weathered wooden crates, and a handful of green plants fighting for life in makeshift pots. Tied to the cart’s back was a slender, bare‑branched tree, its sparse leaves trembling in the hot breeze, as if yearning for soil it would never know.
The traveler—dressed in a faded gray coat, a woven straw hat shading his eyes, and a leather backpack slung over one shoulder—gripped a long wooden staff that dug into the powdery ground with each step. He had no home to call his own, no fixed path to follow, only the restless urge to keep moving, to carry the tree and the garden with him like a promise of growth in a world that offered none.
He pushed the cart forward, wheels squeaking over the salt, and whispered to the tree, “We’re rootless, brother, but we’ll find a place to breathe.” The plants swayed with the motion, their green shoots reaching for an unseen horizon. With every mile across the endless white, the traveler became a living bridge between earth and sky, between loss and possibility, chasing the simple truth that even without roots, a journey can plant its own kind of seed.
- Rootless
