Drawing Life Back

A struggling artist finds inspiration in the most unlikely of places.

Jake Levery sat in his cramped studio, the air heavy with dust and turpentine. Above him, a single bare bulb swayed, casting slow-moving shadows that stretched and recoiled across the walls. The paper before him was empty, save for a faint graphite smear where his pencil had faltered days ago. Time had collapsed into a grey blur of weeks without a finished drawing, each blank sheet whispering failure. The silence inside him roared louder than any storm.

He drifted toward the narrow window. Far below, the city moved in its ceaseless rhythm: umbrellas bobbing through rain, traffic lights blinking their coded lullaby, the endless shuffle of strangers with somewhere to be. He felt untethered, as though watching the world from the far side of glass, waiting for something...anything...to rouse him.

The knock startled him. Mrs. Kerrigan, his elderly neighbor from two floors down, stood in the doorway with a small potted plant cupped in both hands.
“Found this growing between the cracks near the old rock wall,” she said, smiling. “Thought you might like it.”

He thanked her softly. After she left, he studied the gift: a frail green sprout, its roots clutching a jagged stone as if the world depended on it. There was something defiant in its posture, something that refused surrender.

He set it on the desk. His pencil touched paper. At first, only the bare outline emerged; the sharp planes of rock, the stem tilting toward light. Then the lines deepened, flowed. Shading took hold, leaves breathed, roots anchored themselves beneath his hand.

When he finally leaned back, the drawing stared back at him, not a plant, but persistence made visible.

And in that moment, he understood: sometimes the smallest thing, stubbornly alive in the harshest place, could draw you back from the edge.

Word Count: 300
Prompt: Write a story that includes the words: drawing, below, rock
Written for: "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"