Fluttering

While I was sleeping, winter settled in around me. The trees became bare as their leaves fell to the ground, crumpling and crumbling on the way. I held one in my hands, protecting it from everything that wouldn't. When the frost finally lifted, the wind picked up. The leaf was pulled from my hands and drifted away in uncertain circles, and then, at its highest peak, its stem became a spine and on either side, wings. It fluttered them proudly, learned to fly, and pushed its way through the wind back to me. It would not sit in my hand again. It hovered out of reach as though I'd never protected it; as though I'd been keeping it prisoner. Now that I could no longer hold it, it became something greater; it was symbolic of something I wanted and something I wanted to be. It flew around me, boasting, beating its wings. Maybe that's all I am now.