The Fall

         The trees have gone red and gold, the air has begun to nip at the skin. It is not yet Winter, but soon it will be.
         She floats on a cloud of pain.
         He whirs, like the wind swirling outside the window of the hospital room, with no particular destination. Nowhere to go. No way to escape.
         She is brought back from the ether by the doctor's hand. She listens to the nothing the doctor has to say, and then she falls back into the abyss.
         He waits for something he does not expect to hear. The expression on the face of the woman in the white coat is enough of an answer. This is where his life will end.
         Two leaves fall from the tree. Soon it will be bare.
         They fall with a thud; first one, then the other.
         She wails.
         The clock on the wall continues its steady beat, unaware that it should stop.
         He curses nothing, as there is nothing there to hear his curse. If there were, he'd be struck down, and that would be a mercy. There is no mercy.
         The scalpel cuts through flesh and doesn't mind the blood, which flows freely, a vestige of four lives.
         A heart longs for the knife.
         Another threatens to burst.
         The doctors save the hollow shell, then clear the scene of the victims.
         They offer a peek.
         No one wants to see.
         The stitching is done, but no mending possible.
         It is the Fall.
         There will be no Spring.