Memory's Grove

The leaves don’t fall the way we think not all at once, nor always gold. Some drop without a sound or blink, and some hang on against the cold. I’ve walked among the thoughts I kept, like windfalls soft beneath the pine- some bruised with time, some sweetly slept, and none of them were wholly mine. A voice, a face, a half-worn coat once hanging by the cellar stair. They rise like smoke within the throat, to vanish in the thinning air. There’s peace, perhaps, in letting go, though bitterness keeps closer still. We lose the words we never caught- they echo, then they never will. No grave for thought, no stone for ache- just snowlight on a window frame. The past is not a path we take, but one that follows just the same.