As I sit next to the driver seat-- a small leaf is stuck on the windshield of this hearse. Focusing on the half alive and half dead nature of it's blades, I begin to lose touch with the reality around me.
Wondering how this thing is seemingly in a struggle to free itself-- I know the wind is it's true master, but I can't help imaging an inner struggle, for it to make a timely retreat to the tree it has fallen from.
Time has etched it's deathly remnants even into this greenery-- sparse edges that I assume were once rounded are jagged spikes. Each one resembling some torment this leaf has been through, as the world consumes fragments of what used to be true beauty.
Dangling by it's stem is the last connection between filling my mind with the nature of leaves, and other possibilities that have not yet come.
There's a sudden jolt, and the luminescent leaf takes this final gasp of breath to spring itself from the trap, perfectly sinking its escape with my own exhale.
As I exit from this car the realization comes to me I'll never get to see that leaf again.
There's so many different endings that I thought of that I really liked for this poem, but I chose to go with this one, because it is the most true of why people fear death. It is not death that we fear, but the things that we lose when things do die. They can never experience new things if it is no longer around. I guess I could come up with so many different endings, since there are so many different ways for life to end.