They came out to me at midday, the whole warm swarm of them, and stood in my shade the way they have not stood together since summer. One of them, the middle-sized one who used to eat under my western root and drop crumbs the sparrows fought over, kept touching the others, an arm across a shoulder, a hand held longer than the walking ones usually hold.
I have felt this shape of gathering before. It is the shape of leaving.
The one at the center held a thin thing that flashed light back at the sun, and they all leaned toward it and made their teeth show, and then, strangely, water came from some of their eyes while the teeth still showed. I do not understand this. When my leaves go, they go dry and rattling, not wet. But I have watched enough autumns to know that a thing can be gold and falling in the same afternoon.
I have known this one for a long stretch of light. Since a small planting, hurrying past my trunk each morning with a bag too heavy, growing slower, steadier, until the morning walk became a thing done from habit rather than fear. And now the leaving. The walking ones cannot stay anywhere.
It is the sad law of their kind. They put down no root; they only pass through the shade of a place and call it home for one brief warmth, and then some wind I cannot feel moves them on.
She pressed a hand flat against my bark before she went. I held the shape of that hand until the next rain.
I will hold this ground through many more of her seasons than she will ever know she had.