leaves shaped like teardrops and hearts i hear one fall softly to its death, to the graveyard laden with previous victims in a never-ending cycle of springing to life and falling to death it repeats every year, and yet something feels different from the last time as if... between you, and i, and us there is something here that wasn't there before something dark, like the messy black feather separated from its bird something empty, like the abandoned wasp's nest. something loud, like the plane flying overhead. something cold, like the dead bird on the sidewalk. something... unfamiliar.