Autumn drapes its veil like a mantle of gray velvet over the gardens, and the flowers of this final season dance at the sunset of the year, like delicate ballerinas at the close of a performance. In a house where the echoes of youth never knew the call of wedding bells, a young woman reverently gathers the autumn flowers—chrysanthemums, the earth’s last cherished blooms—and arranges them in vases, transforming a simple gesture into a solemn ritual, like a vestal guarding a nearly extinguished flame.

The flowers settle in silence, and the girl’s dreams, perhaps unspoken, slip among the cold petals. In the weary mirror, where youth long ago left its shadows, the girl sees her own face, pale as the November sky, her arms tired from a vague, endless waiting. If the mirror could speak, how many stories might it murmur about days that slipped away like sand in an hourglass, about springs when youth reached out toward love, only to collide with the silence of an uncertain future. Each breath of time has left a fine layer of dust, like the memory of endless dreams that never felt the light of fulfillment.

The mirror, the silent witness to each morning and evening, now weeps alongside the girl. Beneath windowpanes aged by tears and rain, the chrysanthemums rest like sad jewels, flowers chosen by a season that knows it won’t be long before it loses its last rays of sun. Like tiny cracks in time, these flowers carry on their petals the traces of past springs and fragrances once full of promise. In their deep silence, they seem to tell the story of long-ago crocuses—flowers picked in the morning dew, when youth and dreams seemed everlasting.

In the mirror’s tears, each chrysanthemum reflects like a lost thought, like an echo of a life that was once full of color and hope. Everything now converges on this tableau of wilted flowers and a young woman who looks upon autumn’s last gifts with gentleness and resignation. She knows, though perhaps she doesn’t fully understand, that the passage of seasons spares no one and that all beautiful things share the same fate—to become memory.

But, perhaps, there is some comfort. Perhaps autumn will cast a warm sunbeam on the girl’s brow, like a crown of gold, like a farewell in which dreams finally reconcile with destiny. And perhaps the crocuses will bloom once again, promising that beauty, even in ruin, never truly dies.

Thus, in this house where the flowers of autumn rest, an entire world of thoughts and hopes finds its echo, like a gentle song of dusk. The mirror, the chrysanthemums, and the young vestal are all parts of a tableau of ephemerality, a silent poem about the beauty of passing, where, paradoxically, it is in ruin that eternity finds its home.