Leaf Piles

Written and Performed by Leah Crosby

Transcript:

Leaf piles

Every year, I always thought I liked jumping in leaf piles, 

the same way I always thought I liked 

carving pumpkins, 

snowball fights, 

selecting and decorating a christmas tree

and sledding.

I really don’t like any of these things.

In my mind, they were remembered as seasonal delights: rare and special. 

Rather than the smelly, uncomfortable things they always were.

And every year I’d be disappointed.

My brothers and I would rake big, red New York State maple leaves from all the edges of our big New York State yard into giant piles. 

The running and jumping and scattering was never as fun as the imagining the running and jumping and scattering. 

Over in 6 anti-climactic seconds, the running next to my brothers was the best part.

I couldn’t help but wonder why put in the work for a thrill so proportionally small to the work you’d then have to re-do, before bagging up the leaves and throwing them into the giant, hot compost pile on the hill.

I was supposed to like it, so I did.

The musky smell of leaf decay rubbed wetly all over my twig-scratched thighs, enormous from ballet class.

A worm on my elbow…gross.

My braids pointed down, stick-like towards the angles of my shoulder blades, the tips touching the middle of the back of the giant t-shirt I wore over the cargo pants I used to erase my body, which always felt too-much-alive. 

Now the thrill is in the raking, the clearing up of dead things. When I am at my parents' big New York State house, I throw things away when they’re not looking, I organize the pantry, I rake up the dead things in the yard. I am angry, so I work. I slip into sublime sublimation, moving through my unsaid thoughts by throwing away my old art projects that litter odd and dusty corners of their house.

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