Movement of Fall

Yellow leaves fall through the air as rain strips them from the branch, landing on that wooden picnic table outside my apartment- a seasonal collage of movement: squirrels gathering nuts, littering the paths walked by students with their shells, as if to say hey-- I live here too, so picture perfect: The leaves will dry by tomorrow, curling up at the edges, ready to crunch at human touch because the line will soon be blurry between fall and the dry of winter when the colors all fade. A leaf blower sounds in the distance, I run inside for the camera to catch this moment in time: when winter comes and white flakes are the only color I see, I'll remember this moment when nature offered me yellows, reds, and orange- the colors of fall are inside of me, I wear dark greens and browns, "earth tones" so the leaves stand out as I walk beneath the trees who write stories with rings and whisper them in our ears with the leaves we hide in black trash bags. If one fall day, the trash men opened up the bags and spread them around the town, the color would tell us stories we don't hear from our books, so long as we look long enough to listen.