Second Polished Piece: Autumn

She never moved but inches, and those inches, if any, were slow and unnerving. I watched her laugh lines drain from her lips and become cold looking and cracked as she spoke. I loved those lines when they were filled; bringing life to her eyes that now seemed empty.

The days seemed far away of when she spoke of love, dreams and happiness. Even her thoughts seemed corrupted by the sickness that was forcing her away from me. So young, trapped inside a body so old and unforgiving. She spoke of things like her dreams, but instead of her wishes to fulfill them, they were dark thoughts of how her life won’t remain to see those days to come. She had come to terms with dying. She knew not even me, her husband, could help her.

She stared out of the window that looked over our garden like a balcony at the only tree that could be seen. She watched everyday as the seasons changed and leaves fell to the ground in autumn and regrew in the spring. She always had her hair the same, in that little messy braid that fell over her right shoulder. Sometimes she wouldn’t speak or look at me, but at those times she would reach for the child we had made together and hold him to her chest as he slept. Her eyes hardly ever moved from that tree.

She told me once that the spring had taught her that things always change; the autumn taught her that those things could be both terrible and beautiful. From then on she’d always called her sickness the autumn, and if she could walk that day or find a reason to smile, the spring.

She told me that day, as her favorite tree’s last brown leaf had fallen to the ground, that she could feel the end for her as well.

“Maybe my spring isn’t going to come around this time.” Her laugh lines had drained again. My eyes filled with tears, but I fought them away as she told me she loved our son and me. She reached for him without looking as almost always, and closed her eyes for a slow-moving blink. That was the last time I’d seen the green of her eyes. I wept as our son began to cry in the arms of his newly deceased mother.