Collage

Stained Glass Leaves
The world was constantly on fire. The trees burning with hot leaves that everybody sighed at. The evenings weren't quite cool yet, so after sunset and after her house and neighbors and the entire world went to sleep, she wandered out the door. Down the road in the darkness her feet carried her underneath the canopy of trees, her eyes, green like the like the summer at its end, took it in. There was no sun to illuminate the leaves, but she didn't mind. For the streetlights’ yellowed gaze hit the leaves which were thinning with age, and shone through them. Some people go to church to see stained glass, created meticulously and expensively, but here with no one looking, nature created stained glass all its own in one simple season.

Leaves Falling
The leaves fall. They turn in loops and swirls, sighing as they hit the ground, singing as they float on the breeze.

Frost
His eyes were bright blue. Some would call them sky-like but somehow, to her, they brought a memory of frost, cold and sparkling.

Smoke Breaths
It’s a slow drug against red lips
warm, longing.
On its exhale she can see it:
The desire
The future of it in her hand
against her lips
In her lungs
His kiss swirls on the night air

Tree Prisms
She walks, again. In day light this time. Somehow her steps have doubled. A train sounds, miles away. The chill of the air grazes the skin of her hand but her palm, locked to another palm, is warm. Her cheeks pinken. The sun shines brightly in the sky; in her eyes. Forest green stares into Blue frost. The sun hits the icicles and glares.

There it was again. The tell-tale buds on the end of branches. She knew spring would come, as each season does. Around her, shedding occurred. Coats fell from sweating shoulders, gloves slipped from hands. Fingers twined and untwined, hers included. In parks and on streets loves began and ended,
As years do,
As life does.