Weekly Wattpad Contest Entries

#58

(Okay, here goes... randomness)

The wind lifted, sending the leaves to dance and skitter across the sidewalk.  The smell of autumn was overtaking the summery smell of the street as surely as pumpkin spice was overtaking the shelves.   Even now,  a grown woman, she found herself tempted to pick up a stick and let it clatter along the fences as she strolled.   A  shake of her head, mingling regret and amusement that there were pleasures in childhood she had taken for granted.    To have a special time each day just for napping?  Forgiveness for leaping without looking and saying what was true without censure?  More than anything, she missed the allowance of imagination.   Somehow it was fine for six-year-old her to wear a princess dress every day for two months, but do it when you were thirty?  They'd have you so medicated you wouldn't even be able to function.  

Unseasonably chill, the bite in the air drug through her coat, sent the dying leaves to swoop and bite at her ankles, taking vengeance for their brethren whose distant funeral pyres tinted the air with the bitter taste of fall.  Like all things, seasons changed.  Too old now to enjoy what had once made even a simple walk a grand adventure.   The change of pitch from wood picket to chain link had been almost music in her youth.   Had she ever been young?  Yes, but she'd been so anxious to be a grown-up she'd let all the now nostalgic pleasures slip through her fingers.   No more nap time.  No more leaf piles and jumping on the bed.   No more honesty because lies were not yet ingrained.   Most of all, she mourned the loss of fantasy.  Of being able to believe anything was possible.  That there was magic in the world.  You could pretend to be a princess all you wanted as a child, but once you crossed that invisible line, you had to admit you were only you.  Pretending was a sign of avoidance.  Of mental illness.  Of deviance from the norm and of all the things she'd dreamed of being when she grew up, the only one she was allowed was 'normal'.