Watching Leaves Go By

I watch from my favorite cliff as the leaves fall for the first time without you. They don't know where they're going, Or why they fall, Or why the wind carries them so far from the trees. They just fall because they have to. Because it's their time to fall for the first time, though the fall itself is routine. I watch, and I think of you as leaves mingle in the air of different colors, different trees, different lives. They dance on the breeze as if they were meant to. Some alone, Some together, But all of them floating in their own time. And it's altogether beautiful, and fragile, and all too fleeting. I watch as the wind, just as it has brought them together, drifts them apart, blowing them in ways that made no sense at all, and all the sense in the world. But they don't stop falling. They never stop falling. Not until they're ready to return to the trees. I watch them, and I feel you, and I cry. Yet I can't help but smile.