The trees here still bleed with colors of autumn, though it’s nearly December. The fingers of a deity touched the roots and the blazing red-gold beatific essence flowed up the trunk and leaked out at the leaves. I’m certain it’s deity and not devil; I can see the radiant sunlight beaming through the dark storm clouds. Patches of blue sky, deeper and richer than the sky has ever been in Chicago are evidence the divine presence has not abandoned this Southern landscape.
It’s the little things I miss, the things that remind me of the festering livelihood still crawling through my veins; a life-force so often frozen nearly out of existence by the snow and ice dormant in the Northern heart. Little things like the sweet reek of foliage and mulch on the breeze, the air so weighed down with moisture and methodical, melancholic thought.
The fallen leaves of oaks and magnolias couple, co-mingle on the brown ground under antebellum architecture that stands tall and proud of the history no one tells. The stones look like they could have been laid yesterday. Her people, too, like variant leaves, rustle through the streets. Different in shape, texture, and hue they still are blown about by the same winds from the West.
