Leaf Heads.

Leaf Heads

by james bezerra

Hey, wouldn’t it be weird if we lived in a world where – instead of growing leaves – trees grew tiny heads that could talk? But the heads had the same life cycle as leaves? So at first the trees spout tiny little baby heads and those heads just cry all the time. So if you left your window open on a warm Spring night – instead of hearing the rustle of the leaves – you would hear thousands of softly crying baby heads.

And then in the Summer, when the leaf/heads are fully matured you would hear them all talking to each other. They would be saying things like, “How did we get here?” or “What is going on?” or “Why are we so high up?” or “Why don’t I have a body?!”

But then as Fall set in the leaf/heads would start aging and changing colors and shriveling up and dying. So if you were out for an evening stroll you would only be able to hear a cacophony of shrieks and groans because all the heads would be screaming, “Oh god, oh god! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Please help me!” And as the weather grew colder and the leaves fell, the ground would become covered in a brown festering layer of dead, rotting heads.

Then the Winter would finally descent and there would maybe only be one sad, lonely leaf/head left hanging on the branch outside your window. And at night, when you crawl into bed, you would still be able to see its face lit up in the pale moonlight. And you could see its sad, lonely, putrefying eyes looking in at you. And you would look back at it and you would be struck by the sadness you see in its disfigured, but still very human-looking, face. You would realize how lucky you are. And how warm you are. And you would stare at that leaf face and you would want to say something. But you wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say. And you would feel a real sympathy and a kind of sadness so deep that it makes you uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that – even though it makes you feel awful – you get up and close the curtains so that it can’t look at you anymore. Then you go back to bed and you lay with your back facing the window. And then when you wake up the next day and look outside you see that the face is gone. That it broke loose sometime in the night and you look down and see it laying there on top of a fresh layer of white snow. You see how black and misshapen and alone it is. And you feel guilty again for not having done anything to help, even though you still don’t know what you could have done.

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