Whenever The First Leaf Falls, It Falls For You.

I do the buttons up and help you tie your scarf, the November winds carry a chill and you look cold.
We walk arm in arm in the twilight of fall, watching as the world turns gold and falls at our feet.

You burrow your head into my coat for warmth. Your hair smells like my memories, like the falls of our past.
A can dances down the street in rythm with the wind.
A gust of air flutters leaves up around our knees and then slowly settles them at our feet.

I look anxiously at my watch, and then down the road for the blue lights of the late night bus. This bus stop, this lonely corner at the top of the valley. The only spot where you can see love in the street lights; the curve and bend of the valley below cause the street lights to form a heart. There's no confusing it, as plain as day a heart, yet somehow I never saw it till you showed me. Since then it has become our heart.

Breaking our emrbrace I go to check the schedule and look at my watch one more time. You burrow in deeper when I return and remid me of the heart lights.

November is the coldest month, not cold in the way that a snowstorm in the middle of Decmber can be, but the coldest for your heart. The world around us dies and falls to pieces...the flowers and leaves that bloom so bright in the spring and so vibrant in the summer give a final flourish of life and color, then drift off into the seasons of our past. It doesn't matter how tightly I do up my scarf or what sweater I choose for warmth, Novemebr chills my heart. Its cruel winds snake into the saddest cracks in my heart and chill me to my core.

Every fall I look for beauty in the carpet of red and gold that rustles so softly under foot. A blanket of new colors for the often drab world, but it is fleeting and temporary. Soon the color fades and the trees look like skeletons. The wind will start to howl soon, a terrible empty wail when it has stripped the trees of all their life. Soon there will be no more quiet rustle of leaves, no gentle swaying in the wind, just the harsh whip of a cold Novemeber wind cutting through the days until the silence of winter falls like a heavy blanket on our heads.

I pull my hood down as far as it goes. Take one more look as the bus drives off and shiver as I lean into the wind for the walk home.