The Autumn Girl

Monday, July 6, 2009

It is a little late, she knows this. One thing stays the same as her head goes on its routine spin, the way the clouds go on passing by across the windy sky, making her lose her mind. She places her hand up above the small gate that leads up a narrow pathway. This action is either to keep her balance or an attempt to push open the rusty metal, even she doesn't know. Heck, she does not know where she is.

Ahead, the singing of birds breaks the stillness of the dusk. The dried leaves of autumn rustle and drop to the yellow grass near her feet. There is nobody in sight. She feels a cold, a shudder so vague in the middle of her spine and if she closes her eyes, she might think that she has imagined it.There, in the distant sky, the tease of thunder erupts and quietly disappears as swift as it comes.

Her feet are small. Her hands are cold. She hesitates from going ahead, to where it is that she thinks she ought to go. She does not remember anything at all. A flash of rapid thoughts: Where is that companion that has always been around when she needs her most, the one true friend that would stick with her through bad and equally great times? A burst of recollections comes to a stop. She frowns.

To a passerby, she may seem like a little girl lost. One man would look at her and stop to wonder. Where is she going? Who is she? What is she doing here, all by her lonesome? Those small hands look like they could use some holding. He wants to save her. But from what he does not know. She sees that this man is staring at her strangely, mouth half open as if he is about to say hello, hands stretched away from his side as if he is hugging a smoke of a friend.

She gets scared and turns away, her hands both are still resting on the top part of the small unlocked gate. Her eyes are black sunken holes that tells no story except for deep hollowed-out emptiness. She stands there, looking away, her body seems to be swallowed up by the autumn earth.

The man soon leaves. When she turns around, and studies the place where he was standing earlier, she feels that his warmth is still there. A twinge of regret sets in and then nothing else. She sighs and let's herself fall down to sit where the yellow dried autumn leaves are gathered. She sits to hide in her hands, the red eyes that will not stop pouring the rain that beats the soil of the old autumn in her soul.

The birds have gone, replaced by the whine of crickets. Behind the grey clouds, the leaving sun plays hide and seek, casting off a play of light that reflects a brilliant hue of red and yellow onto the grass, with dark shadow marks between the dead leaves and the girl's silhouette. A little up in front of her, just at the side of the road nearest to where she is; if she would just stop that blur in her eyes for a minute, she would no doubt, notice a yellow letter in the shape of a paper plane, pointing straight at her.