October 18th, 2020

The last time I touched this journal was three weeks ago. You see, since I was so preoccupied with the cruel yearly abscission, I simply could not be bothered to put everything aside to update my own journal. My maple leaf siblings and I all were carefully administered by the tree we grew on throughout our entire lives. We lived almost leisurely, but there is always a catch to everything that seems too good to be true. It would never have come to my mind that we would all be abandoned by the very maple tree that supported us when resources began to run short.

I have chosen to move past the decision of being left behind to die on the concrete sidewalk instead of sulking about the decision that was made. I should have seen it coming from a mile away, but I did not know any better a few months ago. In the previous months, I remember clinging onto the maple tree that gave me life, only looking down and waiting for my impending doom that would soon arrive. Every fall, hundreds of us maple leaves would be left behind and abandoned without a moment of hesitation as a means to conserve resources and survive the harsh, cold winter. The process would repeat itself every year; no matter how strongly connected the leaves were with the heartless maple tree, they were always cut off selfishly. Our hard work to gather resources for the tree would be disregarded every time.

After each harsh winter ended, the remaining leaves that somehow managed to live through the winter despite being left on the ground continued to rot. It would only be a matter of time before all the leaves wholly decomposed. Some continue to sulk about the tree’s unsympathetic and cruel methods of taking all the resources for itself, and the rest just were not able to make it through the winter or were moved to a completely different location in the cold gusts of wind.

I feel betrayed rather than depressed as I lie here on the cold sidewalk. We are ultimately used and given special treatment only for a certain amount of time, and it feels that all of our hard work was for nothing. Our existence as maple leaves is an enormous contribution to why the very tree that abandoned us is standing there to this day. Now our only option is to watch the new maple leaves grow in our place, not knowing what they are in for, as we continue to slowly rot away on the pavement with the maple tree’s back turned to us.