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a leaf’s lifetime

i was never a fan of autumn much.

my stomach churns as the first leaf makes its escape from gravity.

sometimes i wish to fall like that.

what i mean to say is:

a leafs lifetime is a summer,

and i envy that.

sometimes, i wish to wrap the sun in my arms and whisper to the leaves,

“your life will last a little longer, keep me company.”

or is that an illusion to what i wish people would do to me?

sometimes i try to laugh it off

but then that smile turns into tears 

and i am lost despite it all.

please,

the irony is tangible to me.

sometimes i find myself watching life as the slope goes further downhill.

i am holding onto a thread

and i’m scared if i ever find my scissors it will all be over.

but then again,

here comes autumn,

telling me to let gravity do the job.

but gravity has smashed so many precious memories

that i am too scared to hold them that close to the sun.

now serving: neglect

i never craved attention,

until i tasted the emptiness of yours.

a falling life

you used to say to me 

that your favorite season was autumn.

so my favorite season became autumn.

the first autumn without you

left me breathless.

it was like a storm of fiery leaves 

blew within me

and corrupted the warm summer i had built up.

a bad smell in a field of lavender.

i crumple every day as i feel the chokehold of the memory of you tighten around my neck.

i have no power over my control,

just like the leaves have no power over theirs.

relations of the disregarded

decay is all i see in the leaves.

i spit with disgust as i crumple the disregarded. 

i am right where you left me,

just eight hundred and fifteen point two miles to the east.

but who’s counting the 

hours,

minutes,

seconds,

years.

i am the disregarded.

that’s how you treated me at least.

i hate autumn so much because i see myself within the colors and rotting…

do you know what the word “leave” means?

it can mean the little scrap of life that falls off the trees

or,

it can mean to “abandon, evacuate, run away from.”

autumn and i have so much more in common than i realize.

forgotten nature

i told the stars and moon and god about you 

and all i heard was silence.

then i told myself about you

and all i heard were the screams to get out.

i lost something

for october rose up and dimmed out

i lost something that night

one of many

in that room

you said that thing

i cried that song

and i lost something

oh i lost something

i lost something

i lost something

cracked tooth

the first of the month

the beginning of the end

i am at the end of my dues

like a wheel,

i dirty and wear,

and turn over

and over

and over

a cycle i can not name

i am an unweeded garden

that lays notoriously whimsical

but who am i to blame for blind vulnerability?

like a cracked tooth on an apple

i am the organic taken to the factory

troubled and turmoiled

i struggled with the fact that 

october faded away and

the end grows nearer and nearer

the pencil scribbles faster and faster

and the wheel cracks over the cacked-up dirt

Graphic: Sydney Folsom