leave me now

the leaves overhead rustle and shake in the breeze, the sun peeks through the branches. i shade my eyes and glance up at the bright blue cloudless sky. the greens and oranges of the leaves are bright in the morning sun. the leaves crackle and shimmy against one another as the air shifts between them. a handful flurry to the ground. brown and crunchy, they hit the ground with hardly a sound. gathered against the fence, moving only to the breeze or when kicked by a child's foot.
soon, they will be in great piles of red, green, orange, brown, darker with age. crunchy and crinkly and falling to bits. they float through the crisp air tossed into the sky. at school and pinned onto papers to colour. show and tell. art projects.
again they are tossed aside and forgotten, old and brown and wet, they are mulched and become homes for bugs in winter.