Fall Into Autumn
words by Shruti Shah, art by Ashley Xiao
Sprawled across the grassy field: oranges, yellows, reds. They are everywhere all at once, consuming the green until there is nothing left at all. I watch them dance carelessly to the ground, swaying as though they never quite learned the art of staying so completely still that the world could pass through them, like they were never quite expected to remain that way at all. The same way you do not expect the sky to fall, you make peace with the fact that the leaves inevitably will. I learned to look forward to it, in fact. I learned to count down the days until it finally became autumn, until I could bundle myself into a sweater and pretend I was warm.
And so as I watched the leaves fall, I fell to the ground with them. What started as petty curiosity morphed into an inability to move beyond it; suddenly, my legs froze with the autumn chill and my bones settled into the crunch of the Earth. I felt the orange creeping into my skin, the inevitable ambiance of fall finally coming to take me over. It felt slow at first, like I could pull myself out of it if I really wanted to. That’s what I told myself, at least, as I allowed my fingers to dig into the dirt and my hair to tangle with the twigs. If I wanted to, I could stop this. I could stand up. I could think back to the summer, when everything was happier and remember the life I had back then. I could if I wanted to. Instead, I burrowed deeper into the leaves, straightened my limbs, and fell into the Earth.
At first it was loud. It felt like everything was happening, all together and all at once. Autumn, I noticed, has a way of making you feel like time moves faster than it actually does. That’s how it felt for the first few minutes. Rapid, unyielding movement, dragging me down further into the surface. Loud. Angry. Consuming. Hungry, unsatisfied, unnerving. I resented it at the time. I hated the way it felt when the world was changing around me and all I could do was sit still and watch. It felt like a punishment. In many ways, I thought, it must be. Why else would the days fade into each other the same way the leaves did? What other reason could there be for the constant, nagging feeling of time being left behind?
Crack. The snapping of a twig. The air stirred around me, and the foliage broke. I could see myself again, unclouded by orange and red and yellow. Time resumed its normal pace. I could feel my arms, reaching forward to draw myself up. I could sense my body tensing, bracing, preparing to lurch up – but then I paused. Before, I couldn’t get up – that was no longer the case. All it would've taken was a single push of the arms. I could do it, if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.
The tickle of the Earth beneath my head. The leaves, forever stuck in an unending crunch beneath my body. Blades of grass pushing through the blanket of color. My own eyes, moving rapidly between the blue sky and falling colors. The breeze passing over my skin, daring me to shiver. My hands touching the ground in awe, both amazed and afraid.
When autumn comes around, I can’t help but fall to the ground. Year after year without fail, my knees give out beneath me and for those first few weeks, I am stuck. I watch the colors dance before my eyes, helpless to the beauty of it – until a twig snaps and I can remember why I ever loved autumn in the first place.
The next time I saw a leaf fall, I swayed to the ground with it. This time, however, I refused to lose track of myself. My knees never hit the ground, and I never felt time pass through me faster than I could handle. I didn’t allow the leaves to consume me. I didn’t dig my fingers into the dirt or give my hair over to the twigs. Instead, I sat. I rolled my legs out under me, felt the crunch beneath my bones. I opened my eyes, looked up, and watched the colors fall.
