Fall

Greens pale and spent
I hang in clusters of the autumnal wreck
Chased and thrashed by the wicked wind
Paper skin bruise-stained in shades
of amber and ochre.

Mottled by trouble and time.
My mind's somewhere;
Oscillating between resilience and ambivalence
Vines are too thin and the grasp too frail
This faltering is an inevitable consequence
of dislodged courage

I embrace the dismantling
Erupt into a fiery canopy of
calloused fragments.
The sheltering ashen sky's heavy
with my scattered auras of red.

Can't the breaking-to-pieces be just as beautiful
as growth, knowing that
it is a cathartic passage to thriving?
Can't the feeling of fear
be the resurrection of resolve
within a beating core
that endures loss and anticipates harvest?

-Khushi Kaul