Short Story: Autumn Breeze

It’s the strong, cold wind of the Autumn, making the flock of birds swoop over me. I press my feet deeper on the grass as I lay watching the sky. The dark silhouettes remind me of how everything changes, how the land has to freeze and they to leave. But for now, they linger here, as do I. They hear the ocean call to take them to foreign lands. And I wonder if I’m a bird. I hear the call, too. It tells me to let the waters take me. Let me drift along the waves, the wind keeping me up high. I don’t care if there’s no land underneath me as long as there’s the darkening sky with the stars farther up, guiding me through the path of the MilkyWay. There the migratory birds go. There I will go.

I leave behind this land. These red, yellow, and green leaves decaying on the grass. They have their purpose, but they are not for me. I’m the creature of the sea, the wind. Not the land or the rock. I’m like the clouds who glide to the horizon and break into new things, never staying the same. Never static. I’m all of those things and none of them. I’m the rock and the land who remains put, letting the breeze break against them, not following or bending. I want nothing of that, yet here I lie, having my moment. Mine alone. No sound tears me. No obligation ties me. Nothing but the birds and me stay in this minute. They have their wings, and I, my mind.

But there is my name, and it won’t rest. I hear it shouted. I resist just a little longer; the birds staying with me, but as they go, I get up and walk back to the steps of my mother’s house. I glance over the oak tree to the clouds and the fleeting dark dots before disappearing into the smell of disinfectant and shit. Only the cat greets me with welcome. Only the cat knows what it is to step outside. Only the cat and I remain.

Thank you for reading. Have a beautiful day ❤

© K.A. Ashcomb