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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