Fall Is Upon Us

The horrendous heat wave has (hopefully) passed for good, fellow Oklahomans. Like a fine wine, the leaves on the trees will become more appealing with age. The bold, vibrant greens will slowly transition into a mellow array of oranges, yellows, and browns. The soft, fleshy texture will leave them and they will shrivel up. Detached from their life force, dead in the gutter, trampled underfoot and scattered to the four corners of the world, the once sought after shade in the summer will litter the ground like locusts in a plague.

The waves will swirl around your feet, drawing the heat out from your body. The goosebumps raise every hair on your skin as a northern wind rushes between the cracks in your fingers. The spring showers' work is slowly undone as everything around you reverts to a lifeless state. The nurturing sunshine that made your heart blossom seems farther away than ever.

Every year, month, day, hour, minute, second, decision, expectation, distrust, and promise you have ever made has led up to the moment you're living in right now. All of the moments in the past were made up of moments just like that one happening as we speak. Every grain of knowledge inside of you floats away like a mote into the cosmos.

She paved the way for the spring rain that grew the grass and the trees. She was lurking behind the sunshine that grew your love into a beautiful flower. She is the frigid north winds that make you shudder; the waves that draw your life away have a name, and that name is Autumn. Love will writhe in defeat as the seasons change like all things do, and the dead, cold hearts will be kicked aside. They will decompose, rot, and be forgotten as they slowly amalgamate into the earth.

Time will pass. Hipsters will take pictures of their pumpkin lattes and post them to Instagram. The snow will fall and melt, and the sun will shine again. The warm rains will seep into the ground, and the forgotten, dead, and rotten love from the year before will serve one final purpose and fertilize the new grass. The leaves will bud more bountifully than the year before. The sun will beam once more, and the memories that would keep you from repeating past mistakes are thrown into the ocean, only to rise again months later as an ironic souvenir, along with the numbing waves at your feet in what you hoped would be the distant future, but inevitably happened upon like wildfire, and without remorse.

Your footprints will be left behind you in the sand as you pace mournfully, only to be washed away with the cold winter waves. The tears you cry will be blow away by the chill winds, and for a time your hope will, like all things, die, only to be reborn with the new year, blossom in the spring and summer sun, and pass on once more.

Human beings are one with nature, and our behavior mimics each other. Whether we came first or nature did I don't know, but I do know that there is always hope in the future, as well as the knowledge of futility. Like the blades of grass and the leaves on the branches, our hope will spring to life and die just as swiftly, until all things pass. This is the sorrow of all men and women. This is our curse. This is our fall.