The leaves have barely begun changing on their block.

“It’s an easy thing,” she says.
They’re walking along the middle of the empty street,
crunching over fallen leaves
feeling as if in another city, another state,
though only a few blocks away.
It’s a warm wind today; oddly stifling and
a car comes veering around the corner
and they move over to the sidewalk
just in time
crunch
Pumpkins line the doorsteps
“Do you remember, how it was
three years ago? And last autumn.”
crunch
There’s no response.
“Late October but before Halloween,
when we went to that fair?
And you took me around to all the rides?”
It’s a funny feeling.
The whoosh of the roller coaster across the rails
barely pausing for breath at the top
seeming to plunge straight down but then
swerving around the tree tops, gold and orange–tipped.
They walk over and among the fallen leaves.
The sky’s clearing up by now, hazy sunlight filtering
through the breaks in the clouds; beams streaming
through the trees.
crunch
And it all seems so short-lasting.
“Everything’s ephemeral,” she says;
this time there’s a nod.
“But remember next year.”

— Lora