Beginning of the end

We should be gone but the sun keeps us there, on the pavement. It's an old street, the trees full-grown so that the light comes through in dapples and flecks and everything seems to shift slightly in the ghost of a breeze.

I stretch out my arms to let the warmth soak in.

Are we going? someone asks.

In a minute, I say sleepily.

Gently, Jamila puts her hand on my arm and guides me forward. I let myself be led.

Up ahead I see a leaf fall, and at the same time it does not seem to be falling at all. For a moment everything is just that leaf in mid-air, as though the rest of life had slowed and stopped until everything was focused on that one golden point.

Stop. Start slowly again.

I watch as it comes lazily to ground. We pass it and are still walking and I think, that leaf. I can see the underwater shimmer of the tree-leafed street and I turn the image over in my mind, dreamily puzzled. Something else is there and I can't see it.

We are at the end of the street when I realise it is summer and leaves don't fall. Not summer then anymore.

Autumn has begun today.