The Leaf

An autumn evening. A man and a leaf, brought together by a book

It was autumn. The trees had shed their leaves, and the path to the park looked beautiful with the golden brown leaves strewn across the gravelled road. It made up for several new cover pictures on Facebook, as joggers, bird watchers, or people as a whole never came without a smart phone, or a camera. It certainly did spoil the image, with everyone clamouring to take a picture of a tree that had its branches shaped in a hook, or a cluster of leaves, shining golden in the sunset. Magnificent, that’s the word most would use. Irritating, that would be the word he would use, for he would go just for the solitude, not the scenic beauty everyone would be mad after. He didn’t understand this. Taking pictures of sunsets, and flowers, and bees sitting on the flowers. What about those sunsets, or flowers that weren’t beautiful? What about those trees that weren’t beautiful? How would one even consider a tree beautiful? By the amount of likes that it generated on Facebook? It was a sad day, a sad month for leaves that weren’t photogenic. That weren’t strewn across the gravelled road. The last leaf on the tree, it wasn’t beautiful anymore. The turn of the century had turned the entire notion of what was aesthetic, and what wasn’t.

He was with a book today. Sitting on a bench, the book propped up on his lap, completely engrossed in the mouldy pages. The gentle breeze of the afternoon was serenading his hair, and caressing the ink on the paper, willing itself to turn the pages, so as to not distract him. He was in his own world, and the breeze wanted to wrap him in its cocoon, not letting any prying souls invade his space. Around him, there were people with cameras, people with phones, people with canvasses, all trying to capture what they were seeing, for posterity. Now, he had special admiration for people with canvasses, for they used their fingers, their eyes, and their deft touches to present what they saw into their work. Their own interpretation mattered to them. This was their truth, the truth of life, and no one could steal it from them. This was what they had given their entire life to, a world that would make sense to them.

Flicking through the pages, he was immersed in his book, a world that made sense to him, for he belonged in it. The breeze protected him, the bench sheltered him, the book took care of him. The people around him were mere specks, insignificant to his life, to what he was doing, hence he was unmindful to their idiosyncrasies, as they chased a particularly colorful butterfly, or flocked to a flower that had bloomed just the day before. He was happy in his world, a world where life was just a mere turning of the pages. To complete, to devour one story after the other, to experience the memories, the lives of the characters in Araby, to sympathise with Gabriel in The Dead, to croon the Lass of Aughrim, he had no need for a companion, for he was happy. Time moved, and remained unmoved. Time was both his master, and his slave. It moved with the setting of the sun, and the decreasing clicks of the camera, and the thinning of the hordes, but it remained still with the start of a sentence, and waited till the page was turned. He could sit there for eternity, and feel time settling itself around him, nestling in his arms, waiting eagerly for him to experience it fully. It was a beautiful thought.
Soon, it was a few minutes until sundown. The lamp posts had been switched on earlier, and the crickets where chirping in the bushy neighbourhood. The flowers were starting to close in their petals, so that they could get their beauty sleep for the next day’s photoshoot. The flowers that weren’t deemed beautiful were lamenting their fate, and complaining to their partners. The golden brown leaves, previously captured by the shutter bugs, were now being swept away to be burnt in a pile. The joggers were sitting on the benches, drinking water, and cooling off. The people with the canvasses were packing up, having interpreted their world, in their own innocent way. The park was almost empty, just a lone straggler here, and there. The light from the lamps above, cast shadows on the ground, shadows of the leaves that were left behind. But there was no one to capture that. For who would want to pierce the darkness, and embrace the light? For who would want to give away their illusions, for an uncertain reality? For who would want to risk all, when there was nothing to gain?
As he completed the last page, he finally put his glasses up, and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was seven past fifteen, and he had been here for two hours. He had to go back home, even though the book was where he belonged. He would come back tomorrow, with a new world on his fingers, and he would be a part of it, for time would wait. Suddenly, a leaf from a tree nearby fluttered onto the last page of the book. It was green, not worthy of being clicked by the shutterbugs. It was different. Two isolated souls, brought together by a book, the dying pages of a world that was no more. Melancholic, yet familiar.
He placed the leaf properly, gazed at it for a while, memorizing every detail of it, and shut the book. Brushing the twigs and dust from his trousers, he got up, and quietly went away, humming under his breath, a single green leaf sticking out of his book.

Author's Note

Critique. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Also, rate it out of ten, please.