Other stories for this prompt

#hashtag condo livin.

Last year i bought a tiny orange tree to spruce up my tiny patio. #condolife.
Over the many months, I watered it and moved it around my patio- chasing patches of the much needed sun. #citruslove. #vitamin c #noscurvy #

I noticed that my oranges were closer to the size of grapes. I notices that there was some missing step....Some missing ingredient. They were small. Anemic.

I replanted that orange tree. Watered it. Placed in the sunniest corner of my tiny patio.

Many, many months later. My orange tree produced what looked like clementines.
With great pride...

The colors bleed into brown, red to rust, green to yellow.

The maple leaves will change and fall with a certain grace-- November will begin.

It mourns the soft breeze of summer, the baked earth from the sun, but looks forward eagerly to the cool rain, and rest in dormancy.

I stand next to the gnarled wood of the tree, placing my hand on the jagged surface.

This time, I'll follow the seasons. I 'll rest and let the autumn bleed from me my growth and energy.

Winter will freeze me, it's icy fingers clutching my heart, winding around my...

then the cold
A wet cold that moves through you that clings to your insides
A cold that whispers soft and true
_You will never be warm

Smile and huddle and see that here too in this fog, this unrelenting mist that covers everything
Here too is warmth, here too is a God

The maple leaves will change and fall with a certain grace - November will begin.

Carla read that sentence in her Literature textbook over and over, and the thought that kept running through her mind was, 'Who edited this book?'

That wasn't entirely true, but her internal monogue ran along these lines. Was she the only tenth grader who knew that semicolons connected independant phrases? Older people complained about how texting was ruining the language, but what difference did that make when a text book author, in what she assumed was an edited textbook ILLUSTRATING the language, couldn't even catch...

Ruby looked out the window and couldn't help but smiling. She was probably much more excited for the first day of school than Ella! The sweet clean little tennis shoes, new notebooks and pencils, pictures by the bus and the classroom door of her little girl in a too-big back pack, even the tears and constant missing, all of it seemed exciting to Ruby. It meant Ella was growing up, and though it hurt beyond description, Ruby was so excited for all of the beautiful new experiences the world was opening up for her little girl.

"Mom?" Ruby turned and...

And then there is the approach of Autumn and September impatiently tapping at the window, intimidating August, chasing it away. I reach out my hands in an attempt to catch hold of it, but it is already overshadowed by distance, one step removed. Only yesterday it was April and there was the whole of Summer; it was a time of promise and hope. I naively believed that I deserved it, that I would be delivered unblemished months. It was such a bad winter, so very long and cold.

But here I am on the edge of the season, dragging so...

The maple leaves will change and fall with a certain grace – November will begin. The world outside my window will be shades of red and gold. Snow, a few days later, gracing the last few leaves on the branches. My mind will wander to that one autumn, the last time I ever saw that face. The muscular arms without tattoos; brown hair, blue eyes. It was my birthday. The autumn before that I spent the night at his downtown apartment. Same brown hair and blue eyes, tattoo-less arms. Genuine smile and honest words. This autumn will not be like...

I hear the crunch underneath my foot. I look down and see beneath me the perfect array of multicoloured dead leaves. I bend down to pick one up and examine it softly with my fingertips. It's a dark shade of red, almost brown, but it still has a tint of green around the edges; as though the leaf had died too soon. I smiled, before scrunching it in my hand and feeling that satisfaction of the noise it made.
I continued walking along the path in the woods. My dog was way ahead of me now and probably not wondering...