The First Day Of Autumn

• Rheegan Ellis, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

It was March 17th, and autumn had finally decided to roll around. After 106 relentlessly sweltering days of summer, the temperature began to drop, and the leaves started changing colours, lining the trees with speckles of orange, red and yellow. The wind would whistle through their branches causing them to delicately flutter down to the rich, brown earth below. The saplings are laughing once more, dressed in their carnival clothes, the gold and scarlet of the autumn days. They play about the earthy hues of the branch and trunk, proud flags in any sky. As they do she takes in the freshly calm air with that hint of an earthly aroma, the fragrance of homeliness. As the longer days cease to exist, the sun now falls much earlier in the evening, the temperature dropping with it. As she proceeded down yet another one of the matured concrete paths her town is filled with, the breeze blowing through her rich auburn hair, she felt the mellow autumn leaves crunch underneath her feet.
She certainly wasn’t dressed for the weather, with nothing but a red-white checkered flannel and some worn down denim shorts sheltering her from the cold.
Driven by determination, she persevered. Face wiped clean as if a screen had been pulled down to hide her emotions, she hurried along. It was beginning to get dark, the coming night teasing the sky into twilight. As the nascent moonlight caressed her skin, promising new dawn, a new beginning, she entombed her memories of him in thick-walled ice. Fear sat heavy on her heart as she walked as fast as she could. Eyes plastered to the floor, she stared at her battered sneakers. The cold painted bright red on her cheeks and the wind threw her hair around aimlessly. Even though he’s gone, she can still feel the violent whispers of him with every step she takes. Coming from all directions, it seems impossible to silence the noise. If only she could get his forest green eyes out of her head. Every time the girl shut her eyes, his smile radiated through her. It was plain to see how it came from deep inside to light his eyes and spread into every part of him. That beckons the question, of why when a singular person can cause so much damage, and shatter an ice thin heart time and time again, why are the happy times all we can remember? Where are the tears, she wondered? Why is it impossible to pinpoint where all the pain is residing from. All she knows is what she misses, and in the worst of times even being with the most emotionally abusive and selfish person, can still feel better than not having a person at all.
The night is clear, and as the stars twinkle in the sky like fairy lights, she lays her head upon a blanket of crunchy autumn leaves. Taking long, deep breaths of that frosty air, she delicately shuts her eyes once more. Tears slowly fall down her rosy cheeks, her nose scrunching up at the agony. She knows that this won't extinguish what has been, yet only carry her forward until a time comes when that searing pain is distant enough to forget more than remembering, and maybe one day erase itself from her brain entirely. So perhaps it may be an oddity to thank her tears and be proud to cry, yet if that's what saves her from becoming this nightmare, a person indifferent to suffering and sorrow, then crying is the smartest thing that she can do.
The breeze continued to blow through that rich auburn hair of hers, and the leaves continued to fall. Everything fell silent once more. The moon shone, the trees stood still and it felt as if the whole world was asleep.