She sat looking out, watching the wind berate the trees, watching the stretched leaves wrestle; it looked a lot like holding on for dear life, before the next calm came, if it came.
She allowed her mind to wander, to question, likening it to the meaning of life, and death, savouring the Earth’s language as if it was her last breath and it would eventually be.
Perhaps then she would come to understand her place in the world, come to an understanding a little too late, that she had actually belonged here all along — but she doubted it. Her life was as fragile as those leaves.
For her, she found only small relief in the concept of belonging to something bigger than her self. Her existential crisis was more like a distraction and the more she questioned her existence, the more she felt separate from it.
She reduced herself to a single leaf, flapping uncontrollably in the wind before it finally detached, or was it ripped away? Either way, she was lost.
A spot of blight upon the earth, that’s all it was, a contagion that needed to be isolated. Nothing clung to her, in her minds eye, or was it that she didn’t cling to it? Whatever it may be. A mere leaf, or speck in the grand scheme of things unbeknownst to her.
No matter how hard she tried to feel at home, here, looking out into the magnitude of life in her own backyard, she could feel herself dying by the minute. She wanted it all to end.
It was a desolate time.
There were so many other thoughts she could have, but like the wind and the autumn leaves, they were at the mercy of that something bigger, that threatened to tear her apart. Hope for a life worth living, felt moot.
She sat looking out — and finally it started to rain.
© Copyright 2022, Jodine Derena Butler. ‘Poetry Out West’, All Rights Reserved
Poetry Out West 