Wet Leaves

Autumn leaves Softened with memories that bleed from every edge In the first downpour of fall. They smell of life, into death, into life again. I guess that’s that circle everyone talks about. It takes me to a place I struggle to turn my eyes from Despite the devastation I know all too well is waiting for me; And another, And another, And sometimes also, a place I pine for, That which no longer exists. But the evergreens do not shed their last year every October the way that we do, Me and the trees. Yet still, some pains burn insatiably in my roots Spreading through all of my limbs, All of my branches, I can’t believe I haven’t gone up in flames, But that would be too obvious, of course— I feel it in my bones. For nothing grounds me more than this weight I carry. That of words left unsaid, Of love everlasting, Of a reckoning— Because, Who I am now is not who I would be Had I not surrendered to the rain Of that changing of the seasons. But, sometimes, I wish I knew her.