Leaf After Death

Think of the afterlife of a leaf.

You grow up, living your entire life stuck to one little tree branch with all your brothers and sisters.

You have a beautiful view of the world around you, but can never touch it.

Slowly, over the course of a season, you blossom, wither and die.

In death, you fall from the tree that you've lived upon your entire life. Dead, but, for the first time, free.

The wind guides your descent like you never experienced in life, before. Blows you away.

Through the air. Over the ground. Down hills to who knows where.

You collect amid other leaves you've never met, huddled together in ditches or curbs or hollows.

A mouse gathers you up and carries you off to a hole in the ground.

You're tucked away, inside, all winter.

Your crackling, brittle lamina insulating the mother mouse's babies to keep them warm as they grow.

Slowly, in that dark warm space, you crumble and dissolve into the soil.

Piece by piece, until you are unrecognizable from the dirt and dust and debris that fill the tunnel.

And that's it. 

Perhaps completely unknown to you—you went further and did more in death than you ever could in life.

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