Decrepit Fall

         I wanted to draw them.



         That was why I started picking them up. I carried them home. Walking down that beautiful, orange, yellow and red spangled street, I selected them one by one off the gavel beneath my boots.



         At first it was the pretty ones, the colorful ones, the ones with the best shape, the largest ones. Ones without spots or scars from acid rains.



         Then I realized that all the colorful leaves in my hands, laced between my fingers, were nothing to me. I felt sick each time I picked one up, but I felt compelled to do it lest I lose them forever when winter came. What if it was for the last time? Yet each one I gathered felt like it took some of my soul to do so. Regret.



         So then began wading through deeper and deeper piles of leaves, some of them old to the point of being from the autumn of last year. My fingers were shaking. I wanted to drop the colorful collection I grasped, but my fingers were frozen. Every single brown, shriveled, discolored, decaying leaf called out to me, and as my steps drew me relentlessly forward, I left more and more behind.



         I realized that the pain was because I didn’t want perfection, even though I was looking for it --even though it caught my eye. My gaze traveled the ground underfoot intensely, each fallen leaf under my scrutiny. I still couldn’t pick any more up; for fear that the one I picked wouldn’t be imperfect enough. The paradox, the oxymoron: perfect imperfection.



         I forced myself to stop walking. I stood in the middle of the road, flanked by the fiery colors of fall, thinking to myself that I wouldn’t move on until a dead leaf was in my fingers.



         One caught my eye.



         Brown, shriveled, contorted, torn, fragile and papery. Taking it in my hands, I saw that it contrasted beautifully with the colors. Colors. I literally thought the word with some kind of disgust. Another dead leaf drew my gaze. And another. And another. I wanted to take them all with me.



         I didn’t want the vibrant hues. Didn’t want the beautiful ooh and aah inspiring foliage. I wanted what there would always be yet what I feared I would lose.



         I wanted to hold on to the decay. Preserve them in their dying state. I picked up a second leaf, once goldenrod yellow, like a sunny day or a young girl’s bonnet, now speckled with black, diseased dots. I collected another, maple, a perfect star, once crimson as a woman’s lipstick, now completely black and dry, all except for the stem, which looked dyed by blood. Perfect imperfection. Another, ripped to shreds by cars and feet over a month or more. Another completely stripped of color, so old that it had lost all hue altogether. I gathered them all home and more, along with the beautiful ones, but these I separated. Shoved them away.



         Why should I want to study dead things? To pore over the diseased and decrepit? I don’t understand why I for some reason today shunned the living, the natural, the vivacious and bold. I felt physically sick, holding them and looking at them.



         And I haven’t a clue the reason.