Saturday's Storyteller: "Billy the Leaf watched his neighbors fall."
by Belinda Roddie Billy the Leaf watched his neighbors fall. The Johnson Leaves, one by one, exhaled in crackles as their skin turned to orange, drifting from their branches with a beautiful synchronicity before settling onto the cracked asphalt. The Smith Leaves, sporting a more diverse set of reds, browns, and yellows across their faces, snapped from their holdings separately, as they had always been a dysfunctional family near the top of their tree. And old Gary the Leaf, who Billy could have sworn was wheezing a laugh the whole time, got to ride the autumn breeze a bit before dropping into a roof gutter and waiting for the next rainfall. Billy the Leaf usually did not mind seeing his neighbors depart, only to be replaced by new neighbors the next spring. While it made the winter somewhat lonely, he still had his family to talk to, despite his uncle being somewhat frosty to him and his mother more attentive to his two younger sisters, who clung to the lowest part of their flesh