The many lives of a leaf

Do wild thoughts count as resistance? Is charting one's own path and travelling alone a rebellion that will be remembered?

- Uddipana Goswami

SUMMER

Before the leaf plunged into the air and floated away with the wind, it was what the tree was, it lived where the tree stood, it swayed how the other leaves swayed. It was attached to the branch, the bole, the root, the ground. The life of the leaf was a good one, with kith and kin, dancing and joy, feeding and feasting on the sun, the air, the soil. But it was a restless leaf; its thoughts travelled where it could not, it longed to follow its thoughts in the wind, through the world. Sometimes, it revelled in the solidity of the tree that kept it from straying, from doing the things that a leaf wasn't meant to be doing—like wandering alone and aimlessly in the world. At other times, it felt it stayed rooted, absolutely grounded, only because it could not leave.