Eunice the Unique

Prompt: Write a poem or story about a leaf, one with a bouquet of colors and crinkly, crackly textures, a leaf with veins so startling you trace them with your finger, a leaf that suddenly whirls you into fall with a whish and a wish . . .
Word Count: 355

Cottonwood leaves are supposed to be yellow. They are not orange, red, brown, black or lavender; they are waxy yellow. They smell yellow when you raise them to your nostrils. They sound yellow when you crinkle them in your hands. They taste yellow when you put them on your tongue.

The leaf that hit me in the face on the autumnal equinox was a cottonwood leaf. There is no mistaking its distinctive shape, but it was no ordinary cottonwood leaf. This leaf was unique and it was exquisite. It contained every color in the rainbow. Each color merged into the other as I ran my finger across its surface.

I traced its scarlet veins with the little finger of my right hand. As I traced them, I begin to change. The transformation began with my hair. My hair was gray as the clouds on a rainy day. As I traced the veins, I could feel energy flow from the leaf into my body like fresh water flowing up the roots of a tree into its trunk, its limbs and then its leaves.

I had wanted to be someone else. Someone as unlike me as a cottonwood tree is unlike an oak tree or a weeping willow. I wanted to be an individual, unique in my own right. I wanted to be different from every other human being on the planet.

I felt the energy from the cottonwood leaf flowing through me and changing me. My hair grew long and took on the shape of weeping willow boughs and the waxy deep green of cottonwood leaves. My body acquired the texture of cottonwood bark, while my arms took on the shape of oak limbs. My legs and feet became roots holding me to the ground.

My face remained the same except that it became part of the tree. I can speak, I can cry, I can sing, and I can weep. I cannot move from this spot. I am unlike any other tree in the forest. I am unlike any other human being on Earth. I am one of a kind. I am Eunice the Unique.