There is a small hot box on the counter of the house that shares my western light, and every evening the walking ones open its little door, set something inside, and stand before it as though waiting for spring to arrive in ninety seconds. I have grown to understand waiting.
I wait for the sap to rise, I wait for the frost to release my roots, I wait through whole gray months for the sun to swing back over the ridge. It takes seasons. It is worth the seasons. But the boy in that house cannot wait even for the box, and I have watched him lean his forehead against its warm face and count down the last numbers aloud, hungry, restless, thumbing his little glowing leaf while a thing that once grew in soil is coaxed briefly back toward warmth.
The box hums. It is a small false summer they keep captive on the counter, summoned and dismissed at will, a season without weather, without birds, without the slow gathering of light. I do not think they know what they are hurrying past.
I remember his mother at that same counter, and her mother before, both of them younger than the scar where my low branch broke in an ice storm. They stood in the same window, in the same light I am still holding, waiting the same impatient wait.
The box will fail. They always do; the walking ones bring new ones. The boy will grow tall and go, and someone smaller will lean a forehead against a newer warm door in that window.
I will drop my leaves over the roof, and take them back up, and drop them again, keeping the light for whoever stands there next.