Friday evening. A faint breeze buffets against the trees. Red and yellow memories fall to the cement. They will become brown and curled. Some teenager walking by will not hear the crunching cry of death through the bleating bass of inconsequence.

These once green leaves are now a memory.

I watch from my parapet, the dance of falling leaves. As the cold comes on the wind blows them away and down the ditch of neglect. A glimmer of memory in a photograph will remain. Taken only in the vain appreciation of the “beautiful” colours, the picture erases the magnitude of loss.

The tree now lays barren.

Through storm and the bleak winter the branches stay. They are the arms of a supplicant to the altar of endurance. The photographer looks through them at the gray daylight and walks past.

The trunk waits in loneliness.