I watch you across the pond. You sit cross-legged peering at leaves as they fall, feeling the wind tearing pieces off you. You are coloured just like them - yellow, orange, and red. You're crumbling just like them but you'll live and they'll be dead.
You'll want me to glue leaves to you, yellow, orange, and red but don't forget they'll brown, and crinkle to the ground, and you'll be naked.
I'd like to move but you may hear me, and I don't want to see the boulder where you're sitting without you. You sit cross-legged counting leaves. I'm at forty three. I could fill you with leaves, I could watch you for days, and then I could cross the pond and wash you with its water, if you think you'd like it.
You don't know it but there are fish there, fluttering underneath the crust of leaves, swimming just below the surface. I bought them from the pet store, thirty four in all, just for you. Goldfish. I think you'd look beautiful in skin like theirs. They'll die soon, they do not belong here. Not like you. I could remove the scales one by one and paste them to your epidermis. Your skin would shine like the sun.
The ground is damp and if you let me, I could roll mud across your body. I'd leave only your eyes free, so I could watch them move, counting leaves. You imagine they are torn by the wind but it is their time to fall.
I imagine how you feel with the boulder underneath you, cracking against your bum bones each time you exhale. You are so thin now. The boulder will be sand soon, and then it will be soft, but not like you. You'll stay hard as you stare, wishing the colour, to stay in its time to go.
When you are gone, I'll move rocks, the largest I can carry. Rearrange them in the creek, watching always the boulder where you'll perch when you return. When you come back here, the tree will be naked, and you'll blink your eyes and sigh. I'll crumple browned leaves and glue the pieces one by one to your body, starting with your back so you can stare straight as one or two last leaves fall to the ground. You'll crinkle your eyes, not sure if you feel. I'll fill you back with crumpled leaves. It will take patience for both of us. You'll sigh about lost colour, upset that there wasn't more time.
I'll watch you as you go, find the place you've chosen to nestle. I'll gather dandelions, rip each petal (so delicate a word for weeds, I know, but I'll save them). I'll colour your body as you sleep. Paste tiny petals to your skin, starting with your toes, up your legs and depending how long you nap, right up to your nose. Then, when you wake you'll see colour. I'll watch you from my spot in the trees, so glad to see your eyes crinkle. It will be glee but you won't know it.
You'll go back to the pond and stare at the tree, shocked there is no colour. But you'll be the one with the colour in the forest. You don't know how to cry but the pond will be your tears, and you'll shudder as it ripples. By then the goldfish will be on the surface, and you'll exhale so strong, watching their bodies float upright, willing yourself to be more like them or the leaves.
I peer at you across the pond. You sit cross-legged watching scarlet leaves float across the sky before they rest on the ground. Sometimes one flutters from sight and you think, freedom, but I see them touch down. You can't imagine they would ever brown. They are red like food-things, those tiny miscellaneous bulbs you rest your fingers on when you walk, sometimes, through the forest. I don't know who eats them but something does. Delicious things you've never tried. Of course, they are red like blood but they are too dry to run through your veins. They belong to the trees.
Freedom, you think, freedom. The leaves may be dying but they have more freedom than you do. The trees thin and so do you. I'll watch your body as it moves. I'll gather turkey leaves. You'll not have eaten the meat but you'll find comfort in their feathers.
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