Just Leave

A leaf, at the bank of a lake, wiggles back and forth. All she sees is the clear cool water and the green leaf resting on top, trying to float away. With the ripples and the wind, it moves left and right but never breaks free. There is nothing surrounding it, keeping it in place, yet it remains.
Young, shy, Anna sits entranced. The waves of a lake have always been a great source of solace for her. The rhythmic lapping of the waves, the sweet kiss of a breeze, and the simple pleasures that show up only when they are meant to (like today’s featured leaf) serve to calm her and clear her head, no matter how hectic the rest of her world may be.

Or how much she feels that it’s collapsing in around her.

Unhappy in her relationship, she comes here to think. Her family doesn’t understand her. She is the black sheep. So different from the rest of her family, surrounded by nature she feels finally that she fits in somewhere.

And she continues to stare at the leaf. Specks of red and yellow give life to the otherwise mundane piece of foliage. Much like her life. Bland and vanilla, with just a few bright spots here and there.

She thought she was in love once. She left him and moved on. Found someone new and tried so hard to convince herself that this is what true love feels like. He is her soul-mate, he, the day to her night; the Jim to her Pam.

But she realizes more and more now how wrong she was. His decisions are her decisions. But she never would have made the same decision that he did. Her heart is too big and full of good things to leave behind the one thing that mattered most in her life, and made her happier than she’d ever known….

A feeling like nausea hums inside her head and gut.  Realization.

That is exactly what she did.

She hangs her head.

She doesn’t cry though. That isn’t her way. Holding the pain in and sealing it in an endless pit like a timeless time capsule is her way of coping. And she is good at coping. She just sits. And watches that leaf.

The leaf that won’t move. The stubborn little leaf. Green and yellow and red glinting in the sunlight that jumps off the clear cool waters. It refuses to float away and leave her in peace.
That little bastard of a once proud family of tree canopy, swaying back and forth as if it is completely content in its world of failure and mistakes.
Goddamn that little leaf, she thinks. Just go. You can go. You have the whole lake to play on and waves abounding to ride. Go.

She can’t see underneath though. She can’t see the tiny pebble that the little leaf has marooned itself on top of, holding it there against its will. It’s like the Ark on top of a mountain after the receding of the flood. It’s just to scale. No less trapped with no way to run, no matter how badly it wants. No matter how much it may wish that the starry faced shy girl sitting on the bank would help, instead of sitting and sulking in her pathetic self-involved delusions of how her life came to be so completely fucking empty.