Leap and Fall

    They say fall is a season of harvest. That’s right. He did harvest loss of friendship and anxiety.

    The flattened leaves soaring in the free tangerine atmosphere become entwined with the oak twigs, their tangling noticeable by bikers under the autumn park. The gold glimmers at the sun's genuine gaze, paving the path for a radiating season. Dozen tourists, local and out of town alike, host pilgrimages to this karat safari, with silent desires of indulging in the concealed abyss of nostalgia.

    A couple of the trekkers are the elderly yearning for glimpses of their hitherto's, now buried in a mossy loam soil of regret and longing. Others, children coveting an uncertain future, their hands extended to the September sky as if they were Atlases clutching the endless streams of clouds.

    Their goals weren't the blossoming centerpieces; what mattered was that they cherished every moment in the park's captivating exhibit of wonders. Chessboards were battlefields brimming of daunting knights and royalty, fantasy books were odes to triumphant heroes rising above their inner demons, and a distant bonfire became a flickering insignia of man's hidden magic.

    Escapism. Seeking distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially through lowkey daydreams and fiction. This was not an issue for a sensible madman like Harry.

    He sat by the deformed birch bench, a frown colliding with his brown melanin. His hands were tightly clasped like a vault's lock, and he quietly sang hymns as if in prayer. He chose to brood in the spots of skunks, trash cans giving pungent aromas beside his quivering physique and puddles reflecting his disconsolate character.

    A lady athlete passing by became a merry sigh of solace. She was jogging, a hobby she enjoyed and imbued in her Sunday routine, and she sported the latest lime tennis shoes. She grew surprisingly fit, with elegant muscles bulging in her white-skinned arms.

    “Hello, what’s the frown about? Gwen, by the way,” she exclaimed as she chuckled all the way across the asphalt ground. He waved hastily, his eyes fixated towards her gracious figure but his mind snuck unto the crevices of a distinct universe.

    She sat beside him, tying her convoluted shoelaces. The aglets were patterned like Egyptian hieroglyphics, intricate to the eye. She tried striking conversation with the voiceless stranger. “Autumn’s gotten warmer, right? The leaves are more golden than I can remember.”

    He paid little to none attention and kept offering tip-taps to the bench’s rusty screw. “Harry,” he hesitantly spoke.

    “What have you been doing all these years, Harry?” She hesitated in giving eye contact. The boy sighed faintly, yet gracious enough to kiss her ears.

    “Same stuff I told everyone who tried to approach me in these parts a lifetime ago,” he rubbed his eyes. They were drowsing, the under layers as black as charcoal.

    She planted a gentle hand in his scorching neck. His sweaty crimson shirt, which was embroidered with a ‘Leave Me Alone’ and a vigorous fist cartoon, sheathed his chest bombarded with blue bruises. “Oh my gosh, sir. Have you slept currently? Why are you even here?”

    “I’m waiting for something,” he prolonged the phrase, in a tone of moronic pleading. Tears were shelling from his emerald eyes, and they swiftly rushed like rivers freely flowing once a dam was broken.

    Her face became a thunderstorm, flurried with fear and drizzles of wrath. “You’re waiting for whom?”

    “An old friend,” he laughed slowly as the noon sun towered above his weak self.

    “Harry, are you sure you’re alright? Did you join a fraternity, a cult, or something? Should I inform a guardian or a psychiatrist about this erratic behavior?” She slowly shook his left shoulder and the vibration resonated with his broken heart’s continuous beating.

    “Mom’s not here. Nor is Dad. And Brother too,” he responded abruptly. He wasn’t irritated with her whiffs of help, in fact, he preferred the company. Waiting did not seem as exhilarating as his consciousness proposed.

    “All of them are not around? Vacation, eh? Shouldn’t you have joined–,” her sentence was decimated into a fraction as Harry’s bitter reminiscing surpassed her lack of intuition.

    “Didn’t you grasp the idea sooner? They’re gone, Gwen!” His shriek seemed to have caused a miniature aftershock, as the pumpkin pie he ordered slid to the moist cement, her latte spilled like a cappuccino tidal wave, and their personalities plummeted into the asthenosphere of chaos. Wielding bitter waterspouts in his eyes, he continued, “the plague’s got them. Months ago. I couldn’t even get a proper burial for them.”

    She covered her aghast mouth with her tender hands as the afternoon breeze subtly changes its melody from an oven’s radiation to a blizzard’s glacial wisps. Nature appeared to be echoing Harry’s lamentations. She too was struck, unable to budge a toe perspired from the laps or to shift her aching back. Instead, she mumbled words like she garnered a concussion. “Alone. You? How poor. Worry not. Some people. Here for you. Like me.”

    The gleaming leaves began to descend into kids’ extended arms and baskets began to gather for mildly sweet figs and pomegranates. She recovered from the blisters of agony that thumped her without warning, and as soon as she did, she inquired as many questions her mind would allow.

    “So you’re waiting for what?” She asked shyly while tucking her frolicking hair. The planets around them seemed to be in constant locomotion ushering feats of awe and the souls’ smiles grew vastly with each endeavor. Yet here they are, compressed in a singular plane of existence with remorse as their constraint.

    Harry straightened his posture, stretched out his arms like a gymnast doing a warm-up, and then mustered the strength to go on with his tale. “Grim Reaper. Demise. Gloom,” he said optimistically as if they were scintillating dreams.

    Gwen’s mind ruptured, crumpled by the anguish her new acquaintance showcased in front of her. Talk about an instantaneous emotion diaspora. Once she was pacing laps and now she was facing a lapse. A lapse of understanding. “But you don’t want to get the corona, right? I mean, there’s a vaccine now, and surely you enlisted yourself in the vaccination centers–,’

    He took a fierce sip from her pink coffee cup and gulped the residue. “Maybe another virus. Or a shot from a gangster. Even a domestic fire.”

    “Now, now. Don’t do anything rash. I know what you’re going through, grieving and mourning, but there are other marvels that can quench your broken heart. It’s not that difficult to–,” she tried to calmly scold him to no avail. What she received in retaliation was a bellowing shout that instructed the park’s shrikes to fly away.

    “How? How is this not difficult? You know what, let me ask you something very philosophical. Why would a man in pain stay here at the park? Hm?” His eyes widened as if he saw an eerie apparition, and she started to blink rapidly as she perceived no answer.

    “Because it’s the fall season,” he paused, yielding a guru in his timbre, “and I want to feel like there’s someone similar to me. That there’s someone else who experienced falling–,”

    It was her turn to shut him. “Harry, it’s 2020.”

    “So?” He stared at her, confused so much that even his focus became blurry. The deciduous leaves became bloody scarlet, the pies became mushy foam pillows, and her eyes became precious gemstones.

    “366 days. Leap year.” The response was not enough to satisfy his worries, nor enough to visualize her ideas. He kept asking, “why should I care?”

    She inhaled a carefree zephyr, and it was like she also inhaled the wind’s wisdom. “See, autumn happens on those 366 days. But, the extra day does not occur anywhere from September until November. When you leap, yes, you might fall, but you’ll achieve great things. Or you might choose to just fall without leaps. The life you carve is yours. Either you keep hopping through lofty milestones or you stay down, and hope to plummet even further.”

    The park grew lovelier every second. Harry could now visualize the children’s smirks and the elderly’s quiet giggling, or the crimson apples pasted on the yellow-orange pastures. He realized it fully: he did not want to escape reality nor happiness.

    He fashioned the shoe as he forged several knots and enclosed it around his exhausted feet. Then, beside Gwen, he ran and galloped towards laps and milestones. Beside her, he leaped and fell.