Sun. Dec 22nd, 2024

Sunday came, and without slowing down to let anyone notice, it went. Sundays have a way of doing that.

On the dissolving horizon the sky looks good enough to eat: orange sorbet on a dark purple plate; overhead black birds want in on the action, circling one another, entwined in their autumnal ritual.

My dog punches the clock, chasing after creatures he has no chance of catching. He chases squirrels the way his owner chases women: blindly and brazenly, but with no idea what he’d actually do if he ever caught one.

All around me, innocent leaves are leaping to their deaths, propelled by forces they never asked to understand.

I step on dead souls blown about by my brother, the wind. I talk to the wind, the wind cannot hear. The wind does not hear (I did not write that).

I feel sorry for the leaves, obliged to suicide themselves, only days after celebrating the fleet summer of their fall, their full flowering of uncontainable colors, their collective contribution to the teeming vibrancy of a landscape they can’t stay long enough to share.

The wind speaks: Stay out of this, it says.

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