"Drifting" by Kate Johnson

I was falling. 

Drifting as the air carried me down. 

I remember being on the tree,

surrounded by other tulip leaves.

It was warm then.

My stem had been steady against the tree,

a sturdy connection between all tulip leaves.

Slowly, it became weaker, 

withering and severing over time. 

And now I was falling. 

There was nothing special about it either.

Hundreds of others fell with me.

I wasn’t the first.

I wasn’t the last.

And when I finally hit the ground,

it wasn’t what I expected.

There were different types of leaves, not just tulips. 

Oak, Elm, Hickory, Elder, even Birch.

Then the wind came, it blew all of us up,

twisting and drifting just like before. 

When I settled, it was different again.

Eventually the wind stopped.

I stopped drifting, stilling under the skeleton of a bur oak tree.