Lilac skies brush hands with fate in tenderly cruel exchanges of passion. 

They flirt with change and possibility while breathing new life into a loveless atmosphere. The aura of the earth is shifting, hopefully into something less bitter. The hate that is here will wash away with the tides that the moon commands. 

From up above, those that are kin with the stars are bystanders to what happens here on Earth. Arguably, they have no care for those that inhabit this spinning rock. 

And Mother Nature has become a sculptor as she carefully carves the different elevations of this earth. She sculpts valleys and runs her hands amongst the curves of the hilltops as she attempts to soften the abrupt landscape. Her motherly touch warms the earth and melts the frost from the tired limbs of the trees and wakes sleeping grass like she is waking her sleeping child.

And on these hilltops and valleys, she has painted different trees to fill the empty landscape with beauty. They cast shadows to provide a hiding spot from the sun and their limbs extend towards the sky as they compete with their neighbor to be the tallest before winter takes over. 

There is beauty in the leaves as they die. The inevitable is out of their control as their healthy green color fades into those that are warmer. They hold onto each other for as long as possible, but it eventually becomes time for them to leave. They must leave, like birds leaving the nest. They have hopes of reaching new heights and moving away from the tree that gave them life, but they end up piled at their feet like broken promises and forgotten dreams as the landscape shifts to something dreary. 

Fall is nothing but a transition period between summer and winter—a buffer between each extreme. It’s a combination of cursing the chill that resides in the wind and thanking it for breathing new, crisp air into our lungs.  

The weather is both preparing us for what’s to come and teasing us with glimpses into a past that is full of warmer temperatures. 

The birds fly south. They call out to one another as they flock to a warmer destination. They leave behind a dreary landscape and instead escape to palm trees and salty air. They get as far away from winter’s grasp as they possibly can. They fear what the frost will do to their wings. 

They’re starting to fly overhead. They are trying to beat the chill that follows them through the air. They’re trying to outrun the inevitability of winter.

And as the geese shift into their v-shaped pattern, a girl is sitting under a tree with yellow leaves and can hear them through the music drifting through her headphones. She gently sets down her book and looks up at the sky, jealous of the birds and their ability to leave.