Fall

Leaves today. I sweep leaves in our front yard. 

Yesterday, they were flowers. Small, tiny, should’ve been yellow flowers, enough to make a pretty carpet to cover the cracks on the haphazardly poured cement. But they’re brown.

Sometimes, they are branches. Small or medium branches, enough to hurt you if you’re caught unaware that it’s their season to fall; the branches whipping your arm or smacking you on the head. 

At certain times of the year, right before the heavy rains, the fruits. They pound on the roof leaving me imagining they will crack a hole that would make the rains think they are welcome in my home. Until they cause a puddle. And then they all come-irritability, anger and the overall feeling of misery of how I can’t even keep dry inside my own house. 

The impact of the fruit smacking the ground with the force of how you would want to break something after a bad day causes the half-heart shaped, sour-sweet (yes, sour first) produce to crack open, enticing flies if left unswept. Then the horrible smell of rotting.

There is something to sweep every day.

And it’s not enough that you only sweep once in the morning. There will be a new falling again in the afternoon. 

It is never enough. 

That’s why we do it. Maybe it has become a lifesaving act. 

Like ironing. Else, we crumple with a lack of confidence that we are ok on the outside. Never mind on the inside. Even if the shirt is not branded. Most especially if it is not branded. But the creases inside would soon catch up on the outside.

Like shrugging off the feeling of missing. And then swimming. We do because we have to, otherwise, we drown. We know it has to be done. Else, everything rots.

So now I’m writing again. Before I rot.

March 17, 2018

"I am an X in an indeterminate equation. And that X is the rock upon which I stand." - Mario Puzo