Leaves

Leaves

Janie Rainer

I accidentally stayed in bed. Half on my chest, half on my butt, twisted. I watched the wind give the trees orchestras of shivers. The leaves flutter and tremble and flow as a unit one way, and then the other. I followed their movements and forgot who I was.

James found me after work. I didn’t realize he had sat on my bed but he pulled my eyes towards him when he put a hand on my forearm. I imagined him quivering like the leaves, his essence pulling apart; some of him curved towards me and some of him gravitated away, in a fluid resistance.

I expected him to make me get up. He would see it as his obligation to take care of me since I clearly did not feel the need to. If I weren’t seventeen and I weren’t on summer break, the people in my life wouldn’t have sent me somewhere isolated and peaceful to figure myself out. They wouldn’t let me pass the days in bed and forget myself, else they would have to forget their unspoken contract with society. I was to be up and moving because life is a moving thing. Always, there is something new. And they can’t bear to look at me letting these somethings new flutter by.

I think of all the mental crises, dilemmas, and what I thought to be existential insights I have thought through my life, as short as others tell me life is. What mattered to me as a twelve-year-old I don’t give weight to any longer. When I did give weight to things, anyways.

I was loud and driven and I was adamant that I knew everything I wanted. But my consciousness goes through waves. I would be caught up in my thoughts and my dreams, and not just my goals—the visions in my head—and then years or weeks or months or days later I would be upset that I had wasted my time thinking about them or upset that I hadn’t thought about them deeply enough and let myself go.

I felt so mature in each stage of my life; my thoughts my mindset always felt the wisest it could be but now that person—those people—aren’t me. And I don’t know if the person I am now, the person who can’t feel time pass who can’t cry when she’s expected to who doesn’t remember the emotions she used to detail in her diary if that person is any more real and lasting and wise as all the people I’ve been before. Will I forget what it is like to forget myself and all my past selves, too? Will I have these thoughts again someday, unable to remember that I’ve thought these thoughts before?

James watches me watch him come apart and then watch myself come apart even though it’s not happening as I’m watching because it’s already happened and I just happened to remember.

“What are you thinking?”

I look away from his leaves and look at his fingers on my forearm. There is mud at the base of his fingernails.

“I don’t remember.”

I see him swallow.

He falls back onto my pillows, and I can no longer see him. I don’t want to look out at the trees anymore, so I move myself for the first time since that morning. I take a pillow for myself and close my eyes, because my head has begun to pound. I imagine it not pounding and it numbs.

He doesn’t say anything and I think he is frustrated. The truth is I didn’t think anything all day, from what I can remember, until I saw James’s face become leaves and I thought about thinking.

I would be caught up in my thoughts and MY DREAMS, and not just my goals—the visions in MY HEAD—and then years or weeks or months or days later I would be upset that I had wasted MY TIME thinking about them or upset that I hadn’t thought about them deeply enough

and let myself go.

Spell - Emma Wolf