autumn of remembrance

poetry

the woods grew thick with the gold of first breaths and the crimson of old regrets. every leaf was a tether, a preserved scent of rain on hot asphalt, the exact frequency of a mother's hum. to walk the groves was to drown in a thousand lives. the air was a syrup of nostalgia, cloying and heavy, where the wind whispered secrets that did not belong to the listener. then came the great frost. it was a clinical cold, a white erasure that climbed the bark in silent spirals. the memories did not fall; they shattered. the gold turned to glass, then to vapor, then to nothing. the forest floor became a mirror of blank snow. in the village, the silence arrived first. men sat at tables with spoons in their hands, wondering why the metal felt foreign. women looked at their wedding bands and saw only circles of gold, devoid of the face they once belonged to. the children stopped crying, for they had forgotten the concept of a home. there was no tragedy in the forgetting, only a vast, sterile peace. the village became a collection of breathing shells, waiting for a wind that no longer remembered their names.