Brittle

I got this feeling I struggled to identify and name. I’ve felt it niggling at me, then gnawing, for months now. A vulnerability I can’t quite describe.

For a while there, I thought it was the consequence of too much heartache. For a few too many years for my own good, I was lost in an emotional crucible filled to overflowing with searing pain too destructively volcanic, too blinding to perceive clearly. I had come to believe that just one more dollop of misery would lead to a galactic implosion.

But that hasn’t happened, though additional blows rain down.

The word “fragile” came to mind often enough. Physical pain provides ample incentive to baby aching joint, tendon or muscle. So, yes, I feel a mite fragile nowadays...but that’s not the whole of it.

As September heralds the season of long shadows, what I’ve come to believe is that I’m beginning to understand the leaf in autumn.

A leaf’s stint is short in duration but magnificent in scope. From the bud that bursts towards the sun, through fulgent growth, through trying days of wind, rain and heat, the leaf is Life manifest. But days grow short. With the diminutions of daylight’s radiance, the leaf morphs, becomes sere. It is fated to become...brittle. So brittle, in fact, that it loses grasp on tree and falls to ground. There to rest, eventually buried, to replenish the soil and nurture new Life.

This kindred spirit to the leaf is becoming brittle.

* * *