The leaf, burnt orange like sunrise

Clings fruitlessly to it's home

upon a frost dusted branch.

It has not seen the ground below

And fears what will become of it.

He remembers the earliest spring

From which he and the others were born

The promise of June.

The glow of the mid day sun

Allowing him to grow vibrant and green.

He thought it forever, that summer.

But all things pass with time.

It's a small change at first,

A light breeze through the branches.

The first signs of fall.

He's not sure when it happened

But he found himself alone

surrounded by his fallen brothers

Rotted brown, crumbled like ash.

He does not wish for that.

But nature is a fiery mother,

Stout and unforgiving

And she, with her forceful wind

Thrusts the leaf from his autumn home.

And in that icy wind he dances

Momentarily free

Until he becomes what he fears.

Ash and dust

Like all things become.

But too soon, for him, he thinks.

A season is not enough time.

But even still, the season has passed.

He is dying.

The skies blacken.

So dark, the snow is stark against it

As it falls with a violent fury

Burying the leaf and his brothers

In their wintery grave.

A lifetime passed in a season.

A fraction of time to us.

But how soon we forget

Of the summertime leaves.

How little we care.

When our own cheeks are blanched

from the cold.

We are not endless

Merely seasons that pass.

And we too will one day be buried

Beneath the frost

Beneath even the leaves.

Deep in that dirt

Mother nature will take her revenge.

And we too, unable to stop it.

All things pass with time.

A reflection,

A mirror,

Fake—

A lie.

Every time she saw black eyes that looked so black and so deep and far away. Unfamiliar. Every time she saw the downturn of lips and a sickly pale complexion of skin. Under the smile, she saw someone else. Under the smooth pale skin, she saw someone else.

Staring into the mirror, she saw something foreign to her— unfamiliar. A face. An expression. This was her?

Lost deep in the abyss of her soul, the girl wondered: Who was Emily Milton?

Who was she?