Once more I stand bare beneath the cottonwood trees.

The winds of a late summer gale tear skin off my bones. I surrender to decay, my leaves turning blood red with a creeping plague, a sinuous turning. Below my feet all I know is turning to mulch, a pyrollic rotting pile. I knead emotions between my fingertips, squeezing out their torrid putrefaction, delighting in the scent of death.

Branches whip off and tear the sky above my head. I hold my arms up high like bellows, imploring, begging that there may exist somewhere the completeness of a life without chains. The falling branches gather as if making a home for what’s to come, a dome of skeleton bones upon which leaves cluster in damp belonging.

All is still now. The prowling shadow wolves of twilight pour into the land, wrapping their jaws around tree trunks. The hollow left by my outstretched body solidifies and gathers dust.

A late-night walker comes upon this scene and stands bewildered. He is unaware that he is standing on my bones and that the forest tears into him too. He is unaware that within, his own churning and mulching has begun. The unknowable immensity of the stars hangs dense over his head and all around the elements dance their love song.

We all stand on borrowed land, breathing borrowed time, submitting to a willful amnesia that forgets nothing could ever be ours to claim. The dancing leaves tell us this – that whilst we cling to the fruits of our ambitions, in the turning of the seasons they too will gracefully tumble to the ground, exhaling with outstretched palms.

I walk home. The sky has turned scarlet with the color of the leaves, a secret language betraying that flames live in leaves and trees burn without flame.