leaf pile

For a brief moment, you are somewhere else.  The leaves close over your head, and the world stills. Small pricks through your shirt as the leaves work their way in, thick with the smell of earth. This is its own world,  one where you are a child, and you are small and secure in what you don't know. At some point, you will emerge for the last time, and you won't know it.

It will be the same as every time before, but it will be the last time the leaves take you and hold you. You will never be that close to the earth again.