Falling Leaves [ENG]

Chapter One

CAJA

Will Killen – The Outside

The train doors open in front of me and people fight their way through the narrow slot of the moving queue onto the platform to freedom.

Occasionally, a few rays of sunlight penetrate the atmosphere of the station through the thickly clouded sky. Illuminating the desolate grey that makes up the complex. Interrupted by dots of human colour with hurried, smiling or sad looking faces. Boy and girl tearfully say goodbye to each other. Two children are arguing. Their parents' attempts at conciliation bounce off them ineffectively. An old man leans on his walking stick in search of support. Somewhere above us, a crow flies, revealing its displeasure that it is probably about to rain.

I'm on my way to Erfurt for a flat inspection in a shared flat. After I needed a break from everything and everyone right after graduating from high school, it is now slowly time to return to reality. To a reality that I'm actually still trying to suppress. I'd much rather live in my books, on the mountain tops of this world or on the beach when the waves whisper to me to swim to the end of the universe and never look back. To forget what was, with the focus on what is to come. I've been here, I've been there. Travelled, stayed. Been on the road or spinning in circles on the spot.

For a few weeks now, I've been back in Germany with my family, after I disappeared from their lives and my own almost exactly 365 days ago.

It's time to board the train. I notice that almost no one is standing at the platform. My gaze wanders to the display board and immediately to the bulky station clock, around which a multitude of spiders have woven webs. The hands of the clock have stopped at some point: Five to twelve. How nice it would be if my life clock showed the same time. If I had the chance to make a different decision shortly before the end of the day than the one I had made at that time. One that doesn't remind me of five past twelve.

I board the train. Immediately, the stuffy thinness of the last passengers gets up my nose, against which the air conditioning tries desperately to fight. My destination is only three quarters of an hour away, I tell myself silently, somehow I will survive.

Compared to the arrival, the train is a lot emptier, so I even get a seat by the window in a quad. After sitting down and stowing my backpack neatly between my legs, I reach into my left jacket pocket in search of my headphones. At first the little plugs feel cool in my ears, but only a few seconds later they adjust to my body temperature.

It is already dawn. When I arrive in Erfurt, it will probably be dark. I start the music and look forward to soon being able to begin a new phase of my life that will ideally have nothing to do with my past.

My gaze is directed into the distance. Thoughts blur into one big mass that often makes it impossible for me to bring order into the chaos that accompanies me every day.

Leaves swirl through the air, carried by the wind. Autumn has finally arrived, in my head and in my heart. I open the little notebook without which I never leave the house and begin to write:

I walk through the dark alleys,

colourful leaves are everywhere on the streets,

Autumn has finally arrived,

I welcomed it warmly.

My shoes clap on the wet asphalt.

Now, at last, I am ready.

Think of you in this season.