I watch as my dreams dissolve into the uncaring world. I watch the oak gently reaching for the sky, its open palm lay open, fingers outstretched, gathering bronze. Hail autumn, your winds have reached me. They are gentle, fatherly, easing nature into the inevitable change to come. The linden aroma crumbles amidst the seeds of harvest, and so work and toil has to begin. Fittingly, I reap what I've sown. Loneliness, longing, lust. I harvest lessons from the deathly shell of my ego, my soul, my shroud of lies. They've bloomed into an abyss of no margin. The wind rustles my leaves and I'm left feeling its unfairly gentle to me. Of course I'm but a sapling, so it doesn't matter. The water is gentle, the wind caresses, the birds are calm, and I even find a way to smile, but I feel so damn close to looking too deep into the black. My 28th autumn, and I hear all the echoes, its melancholy is gripping. And I find myself as I've always been.