On Leaves

We can turn over new ones, they say, everything may begin again in spring and we are blank slates again, the future what we want it to be. I turned over in my bed and it was new, perhaps, but it felt well known. Or was it vice versa? That it was familiar, but felt brand new. I slept a heavy sleep and sometimes it’s hard to remember dream from reality, fact from fiction, the truth is my dreams know better than me anyway because I spend a fair amount of time squirreling away secrets from myself just in case everything inside me might break. Please don’t break, I ask my insides, but I forget they know me better than I do, they measure their weights and balances and the strength this life made me prove I had, do not think I fear the leaves changing. Do not think I fear their fiery colors washed across the hillsides, the sharp crunch of their sidewalk crumbles.

I have walked across the desert plains without a drop of water, I have raged through storms without a breath. When the leaves fall, I am still here. If you fear there is so much old there cannot be new, remember this: from fallen leaves grow little spires. We would not know spring, without all that came before.