Rings – The Meditations of a Mortal

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You.
You there.
Yes, you with the hair so like the leaves that autumn brings.
Do you know why fall is my favorite season?
It is not just the hint of chill in the air.
It is because rings are made.
Yes.
I love fall because I love decay.
Because I love the evidence of life that has been lived.
The gentle descent of death into rivers as cool, and deep, and gray, as those eyes you’ve fixed upon me.
You shudder and wonder what’s so great about rot.
Well look at the tree’s hair that’s just landed on that delicate shoulder, so near your own leafy crown.
How I love the slight bend in your neck.
How tenderly the angle travels to the collarbone.
You know I see you as a skeleton,
Shhhhhhh… relax a bit,
you’ve drowned your cigarette in gin,
I’ve no desire to harm you.
Here take mine,
a famililar act should steel the nerves.
You know that such lovely lips should not be chimnneys.
But while we’re on the subject of smoking,
why is it that we love it so,
the wrapping of these dead dry leaves and their cremation?
We inhale decay.
And in rings the evidence of life’s passage curls round us.

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