Autumn

Written 54-G22 [2023-01-26], Edited 54-G22 [2023-01-26]

Image credit: Twitter Twemoji

I heard the drying leaves crunch underneath my boots. Every year it happened. The leaves would change their color, then fall, then dry up, and we’d have to rake them.

Every year it happened. It was a fact of life, a result of evolution. For the trees to survive, the leaves had to be drained of their chlorophyll and die. The parts sacrificed for the whole.

Every year the leaves fall from the trees, but my boots would not always be able to find them. One day I would not be around to step upon the leaves. One day I would be the part.

And who would be the whole? A family, a town, a workplace? A province, a nation? The human race? When my time came, who would have benefited from my presence?

I thought about endings a lot these days. Every year of my life had been the same.

The same books about evolution, and trains, and geography.

The same friends, the same school, the same town. The same four seasons, which were the result the same latitude.

The same country, the same culture, living under the same flag, singing the same anthem. That was my life.

My life was ending.

I wasn’t dying, but I was ending. Like the leaf who went from being part of a tree to part of a compost heap. I was also changing my colors. I was also changing the whole that I was a part of.

I knew it, logically, but never felt it was true. My mom told me months ago and I couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t believe it, until the day something different happened.

A truck rolled up to our house, and came to a complete stop. And on the side of the truck were words I had never read before.

“Zachary and Co. Packers and Movers”

Notes

This was written in 15 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.

Feedback from the Joy of Writing Group

• Inconsistent viewpoint: is the narrator truly a child?