Autumn never begins where summer leaves off, rather, it begins in the first amber showers of the season and ends when the trees are stripped of their summer glory.
Day 1 of autumn:
The first day of autumn finally comes, along with the remnants of this year’s summer, a warm gentle season embracing people with the sun’s blessings.
My fellows, just a few shades brighter, a result of the golden rays that have ever so gently kissed our skin in our fleeting lifetime. To some, autumn is where life is just barely starting, where the world shifts colors and stories from summer’s ovens are retold and rekindled like a warm fireplace. Autumn—the solace before a winter storm, but for something as small, as fleeting and as fragile as I, it is the kiss of death.
Locked in place by the branches that have been my home and designated viewing spot, colored in fiery hues, I sway with the ghostly winds that bring solace in times like these. The smell of pumpkin spice reaches the top of the tree where I reside, tempting me to let go of what remaining time I have to take a dip on someone’s warm drink. What a way to go, isn’t it?
Day 7 of autumn:
An old woman on a bike, which is weird? She’s wearing this hat the same color of the dried leaves with threads hanging from the hem, and she had no hair left on her head. She has this smile on her face that beats any ray of sunshine in the peak of summer. Just behind her, a woman with the same radiating smile—a younger version of her that mirrors the old woman in her youth. On her hand was the same cup of pumpkin spice latte, so pungent that I doubt how the entire neighborhood wasn’t out to ask where the lady got her latte from.
Day 13 of autumn:
I soon found out from the chirping sparrows that the old lady and Ms. Pumpkin Latte are not related by blood. From what I heard in between mouthfuls of breadcrumbs, the old lady was sent to the nearby nursing home, and the lady was only a caretaker. Perhaps it was their time together that made their smiles the two halves of a full moon. It’s a mistake for her to be locked in and yet she flourished, like a tree shedding its former shell, beginning the transition from this life to the great beyond.
Day 24 of autumn:
I wake up to a cold dreary morning with the rustling of my fellow leaves, marking their final days. As they fell, my eyes followed them. Seeing how big humans are, I feared being forced into the golden carpets that cover the earth in a jigsaw-like manner. Is autumn a universal golden sight? Or is it perhaps silver in color, a whisper of the coming winter?
Day 26 of autumn:
As autumn passes by, these fleeting memories serve as the only thing holding these fragmented moments in history. Pieces of human emotions held to the earth through objects—tangible memories of times long past. Sentiment, emotion, love. Words thrown around to give meaning to life. Then autumn comes and the golden hues of the world immortalizes time in an amber-colored dream before the frozen winter comes to snatch all of life from summer’s embrace.
Granny talked to us a lot today. To the trees, to the leaves, to me. She told us stories of the different colors of the world during this time of the year. All the smells (aside from pumpkin spice) and sensations that come with autumn.
Her voice was a hummingbird’s song, floating through the air and bringing life to her words through ragged breaths in between. It is in these moments that time seems to go on forever and backwards all at the same time. People call her “sinayl” though I’m not really sure what that means nor fathom why passersby would say that.
Day 35 of autumn:
Down here on the ground, afternoon rays cover the world in bloody hues. I am reminded of war zones or apocalyptic landscapes but with the humming of the birds, a melody accompanied by the staccato of rapid footsteps bringing comfort to my tired soul.
My mind wanders to the past summer with the heat of the road mimicking a hot and lazy afternoon. Shadows of movement darken my vision, while the sound of speeding vehicles and the slow yet steady thuds of footsteps on the concrete roads fill my senses lulling me into almost a fitful sleep.
I hear the rush of sewage water beneath me, mimicking the rushing winds. Gently, I let my consciousness drift away, absorbing, yet separating myself from the world that surrounds me.
I close my eyes and hope that there is more to life than that.
Day 50 of autumn:
I can finally see! I have been awakened from my tomb to the bright light of this clearly man-made building. The snow white walls envelop the world in an ethereal glow, like a coughing and wheezing heaven.
Where the hell am I?
That question was short-lived as gentle, calloused, wrinkled, and shaky hands picked me up from my resting place, placing me atop a wooden surface. I hear a tak! Followed by the feeling of a wet felt tip pressing against my already flattened body and the smell of alcohol and gasoline filling my senses.
I can hear the scratch of the felt tip against my body and as I try to distract myself from whatever was happening to me, I strain my eyes to see who it is that was doing this to me. I see the same kind eyes that I’ve grown familiar with throughout this autumn.
Granny?
Granny looked so… different. I have never seen her this close, was she always this pale? The more I look at her, the more I see the features on her face, distorted by time and age, trembling as she writes. Carefully, she slips me in between the pages of a book and wheels away on a chair and I am once again left to think by myself.
Day 53 of autumn:
The silence that greeted me the next morning was deafening, an echo chamber of the caretaker’s weeping.
She gingerly holds what is left of my fragile self, reading what Granny has marked on my body, holding my body and my fleeting consciousness cradling it close to her rattling chest.
Slowly, she walks and sets me atop the same wooden table where I first awoke from my slumber, hearing the gentle, almost mechanical rustling of what is left of granny’s clothes and belongings, mimicking the sound of falling leaves.
What is left of my fragile, almost fossilized body was pried away from small, warm, and firm hands that held on to me. The clacking of heels against a wooden board breaks the silence of a dead and quiet room like the thud of a beating heart against a rib cage.
I can hear the whispering in the room like the rustling of the leaves in the field, and feel a candle’s warm and sickly orange glow—a mockery to the glory of autumn days. Tumbling down the floor on the young girl’s lap with Granny’s bright blue eyes, she examined every vein running including what granny wrote on my chest as if saying, “here I am, alive within this leaf.”
Whatever sentient being that created me has other plans for me.
I open my eyes covered in darkness, my body locked in place. I can’t move, but I am finally at peace.
