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Unclaimed fallen leaves
Spring winds clean winter branches
Leaves billow far from home
A maple tree sheds its own in tune
No one is around to collect them
Flat and perfect to be pressed in a book
Unlike humanity’s tree in March
It sheds its leaves year-round
We gather around its floating remains
We mourn our buds yet unfurled
We cry when our crimson leaves fall
But some are not so lucky
Some are unclaimed and unloved leaves
Like dead leaves blown by Spring winds
Ordinary as the ones that pass you by
No one to press them between leaves
They belong to the careless breeze
Free to disappear from existence
There is a terror in freedom
Adrift and alone
With no one to catch one from falling
As our stems fail and we fall
A human fallen leaf is a sad sight
Sadder when no one catches them
No one to press in a folio
Place a gravestone as a bookmark
A novel with pages forever shut
Never to see the light of day
Isn’t it better to land on the ground
With all the other compost?
All the leaves nameless alike
Under the cruel sunshine
Under the cool moonlight
Rather than a maple leaf loved
Safely tucked in a page
Between nine and infinity?
Those who have no one who loves them
Those maple leaves unclaimed
Make the pages for those who are loved
Like fallen and unloved maple leaves
Still making the soil we tread upon
Copyright ©
Triny Xiang
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