To her, the autumn leaves have always blazed. Unwittingly, she has buried deep the green, along with her youth, her age and all that separated them.

            All concept of change has drizzled away through too many perforations.

            Through cloudy eyes, she sees a golden mass of syrupy warmth, leaves like opened palms cradling flames, cracks of radiance like static lightning bolts and shields of sunlit bronze; she cannot muster the words, but it feels good.

            She does not know that she is warm and dry. Outside the glass, where the world is real and moving, the rain drums and the wind’s waltz becomes a Barynya. She does not think of fireworks or confetti as the wind-whipped leaves explode like a startled crowd.

            Fleeting snapshots:

            Shiny conkers in childish hands.

            Figures of eight winding like string between towering trunks.

            Rainbow-bubble bursts of laughter.

            Elastic images and sounds flick inside her brittle skull, then crumble and disperse.

            Like the leaves. Like her.

            She will not feel the papery crush of whispering leaves beneath her slippered feet, or smell the damp richness from earthy pores, even if she is led outside.

            The colours ignite their rain-painted sheen and watery pearls are cupped by curls.

            To her, there is no change.

            She glances at her tepid tea, slurps, and, like a fallen leaf or a last breath, her wandering gaze settles, her contentment framed by the fatherly oak in the window.             And all she knows… all she knows, is that it feels good.