Leaves

Crouching there, I watched. Silent, I glared in a state of pure fascination, as the leaves blew from side to side, tossing and spinning in circles, flipping over to one side, then another, moving with the wind - catering to every unspoken dictation spurted out by the laws that our universe does so humbly follow. One leaf caught my eye. It was big, but not too big. It looked crisp and light, holding onto its glory, though browning and slowly, but surely, being taken by the elements. I imagined standing on it, feeling it crunch and break beneath my feet. I stayed there, incarcerated in awe and inspiration, despite the cold Winter air burning my eyes and nose, eating up my body with a numbing ache.

When a man dies, his beauty is taken from him by the harsh world that we live in. His skin waxy, his hair brittle and thin, he begins to fade away. He melts into the background, being swallowed up by the world that once gave him the fragile miracle that is life. The world that brought him happiness, love, and acceptance. The world that made him cry until his eyes would sting. The world that made him bleed when he would fall into the nettles as a child, and the exact same world that caused his blood to clot, allowing his flesh to heal, and his skin to rebuild itself. Though it wasn't the same, ever so discoloured against the rest of his body, gentle a warning that nothing can stay the same forever. He becomes the same world that provided him with his frail last breath, before it heaved him away from his wife and children.

Leaves. They never lose their beauty. A tree, planted as a seedling, is suffocated by the soil. Soon it is bursting into life as it climbs to the surface, protruding into the heat and light, discovering its silent life support in all its glory - the Sun. Our Sun. Years pass by, turning a pitiful twig into a resplendent and dignified, fully grown tree. A tree brimming with beautiful leaves of all different colours, shapes and sizes. The tree supporting them, much like the Sun has done for the tree for many years. A truly magnificent existence.

Tens, to hundreds, even thousands of years of greatness, towering over the world like a watchful eye, in a robust silhouette of perfect, potential timber. Though, everything must come to an end, and the burly tree must fall to its final resting place. The leaves, now desperate to leave the feeble and dying being that was once their most reliant life source. Jumping to their inevitable end, one by one, each leaf falls. Wind beneath, carrying them down to safety, each must go eventually; even the most loyal must abandon their home. They land, left abandoned and desolate in the cold and damp, slowly being consumed by the darkness. A demise soon to come, completely inescapable. As they turn red, brown, white, they steadily dissolve into the dirt, to one day become the soil to support the life of a brand new tree. Another life support system, much like the one that fed it life and nurtured it for many years. Everything must come to an end, but some things never die.

The beauty never dies.