Marie Goes for a Walk Through Empty Leaves

[Angela]

The trees released them during a soft rain, when there was no wind, and they stayed where they fell on the pavement, and as it remained wet and still for several days, she looked toward them through the window.

Marie sensed their distance and their quiet palette of fall colored stained glass; they clung together, flattened into fractured layers, a community of leaves.

Later, when the weather shifted to the breezy and bright that one expects this time of year, she took her dog for a walk, and while most of the leaves had dried and blown away, some lingered behind.

The rain had soaked those so thoroughly they were stuck to the concrete, and their color was faded and tickled with little spots, as if they were beginning to decay from the inside; around each leaf was a kind of shadow, a greyed rim of pigment which had leeched out to stain the walkway.

Some of these leaves became dry enough to escape the pavement with the aid of the wind, and what they left behind was a kind of reverse negative, a vague and spreading boundary in the shape of a leaf, with a colorless, empty center which seemed to glow by contrast.

She took pictures of them with her phone to catch them before they could wear off, any evidence of them lost.

[Kristine_ES]

hello ms. leaf! and congratulations on your 400th post.

[Stephen Torelli]

Autumn... ablaze with color and what's "left behind" before Winter.  Happy 400th. 

[Robert Crisman]

The 400th! A photograph framed, given place in the window of a gallery: Autumn Interment, beautifully rendered as leaves give way to stark winter.

[Paul de Denus]

I feel like an ant with a microscope down on the ground reading this- inside the inside- congratulations on your 400th post