Capsule Stories Autumn 2022 Edition: Falling Leaves

Featuring poetry and prose, Capsule Stories Autumn 2022 Edition explores the theme Falling Leaves through melancholy yet hopeful writing about falling, leaving, and letting go. These stories and poems reflect on a season of change in life. Read about grieving a loved one, leaving the only place you've ever known as home, falling out of love, and learning to let go of something you once thought would last forever. Capsule Stories Autumn 2022 Edition: Falling Leaves is the perfect book to read on a crisp autumn day as leaves fall outside your window.

Falling Leaves

As you walk home, the leaves swirl around your feet, crunching beneath your shoes with each step. Reds, oranges, yellows, and browns color the street so vibrantly that you stop and take a photo. For a brief moment, you want to send her the photo, to share this beauty with her, and then you remember that she's gone. You put your phone back in your jacket pocket and shuffle down the sidewalk, lost in memories. You don't look up until you're home. The big oak tree in the front yard welcomes you, its yellow-sleeved branches rustling in the wind and waving hello.

The oak is dying. The arborist said it wouldn't last much longer and that he would come back before spring to cut it down. You agreed and set up the appointment, though the thought of losing the tree stung your eyes with tears. The oak shades half the house, dapples the wood floors with patterned sunlight in the late afternoon, covers the sky in a canopy of green half the year, blankets the ground in color each fall. It's part of your home, a constant in your life, the way you tell the seasons. Its whispering branches lull you to sleep each night. But the oak, too, will leave you sooner than you'd expected-at least you have time to say goodbye.

You make a cup of tea and sit on the window seat in the living room facing the oak. A squirrel scurries up the thick trunk to some unseen hiding place to store its food for the winter. Does it know the tree is dying, that its days are numbered? Next year, the front yard will look empty without the oak. Maybe you'll plant a new tree, full of hope and promise. But for now, you're content to sit and watch the tree unclench its tight fists and let go, golden leaves floating from tree to ground.