Pressing Leaves

A glass vase hides under a blanket so that no one will find her, smash her--take her in their bare hands and crush her because they like the the feeling of the jagged edges cutting their hands. It's a gruesome image, but it's the truth of the matter and it scares me to death.

Once again, the light is filtering through the windows. It makes me want to bite my lower lip; I want to sit there all day and watch the light fade. But in a moment my eyes are downcast, because if all good things were meant to last, then why does the light fade? 

It will be there tomorrow are the words I say to console myself. I give myself a fake smile in the mirror and wish upon the stars that it'll be real soon, because it's hard to keep a sunny disposition when it's night and all you want to do is hide in that cave that took so long to carve.

Don't worry about me, though. I keep some fireflies in a bottle, and so far the glass has done its job. Those fireflies and dreams are like those leaves I picked in the mountains all those years ago--the ones that should've shriveled and died, but I learned a long time ago that you can put those leaves in a book and press them down, smash them, and abandon them. When you come back in a few weeks, they look just as they did when they were alive, only this time they'll never fade, and they're more fragile than glass. 

I collected heaps upon heaps of these artifacts from nature. The hard part was keeping them from crumpling into dust. I hid them, protected them like relics of the past, like the Declaration of Independence. They were the last pieces of Autumn, and the first pieces of me. 

I sit in the water longer than I need to, because sometimes it feels so good just to hear things simplified. To breathe life into my corners again. Nothing matters except the pounding water that's trickling down your scalp; they're raindrops in a more domestic setting.

Brush off the sticky notes with a flick of your wrist, because they'll still be there when you get back, and you don't need them attached to you. You don't need to be attached to them.