Good Morning, October.

Leaves curdle, green to gold, and fall. It's a long way down, from tree to ground. The world seems so much bigger from here, they think to themselves, as the sky overhead arches its gray, damp back behind the delicate net of branches they once called home, those bark-bound fingers now bare as bone. The wind scoops up the leaves' brittle bodies, the whisper of their haphazard flight like the murmured rustle of turned pages. The world spins in an ocean churning with faded color, mixing into muddied brown.

The leaves build piles like wishes build regrets, gathering together for solace the way dust motes do, an altar to memory, to what once-was. They cover the sidewalks and line the gutters, and soon feet will trample their bodies and snap their spines, but they do not complain. They tasted sky, once. The earth is not too much to bear.

Life is a circle, of cycles, of seasons, of repetitions, of nothing-new-under-the-suns. We are not leaves, but we know well the sensation of falling. The heartbeat of the seasons is a clockwork we cannot control, yet we are always fighting, even as we watch the colors bleed into gray--there is nothing we can do to staunch it. Only mourn, and wait for morning. Sweep away the regrets so you can breathe again, and beware the backward glance, lest you miss: the way the autumnal sun paints everything in gold.