The Asters Are Out Again

The asters are out again, just in time for my birthday. 

And each year on this day, I look back and wonder how a person can change so much, and how, without thinking, I suddenly am who I am. 

It’s like how the trees go from buds to green to red to gone, each span feeling so long but so short all the same. 
And the ferns look like fire now, an inferno. An inferno without heat, frozen in place till they crumble to ashes once again. 

I don’t feel a year older, but I feel a year changed, though I suppose that it’s all the same in a way. 
Just like how in the fall you can finally look far through the forest to see what’s beyond without the shield of green a barricade, I can now look back through myself and see where I once was. 

But I can’t go back, not easily, even if I wanted to, for do the trees not have to brave the winter’s icy cold to bring their buds once again? 
To change once more, I will go through winters of my own. 

The leaves are a kaleidoscope, red-orange-yellow-green-brown like fireworks. I see the colors reflected in the surface of the water, and I see now that fall is a time of reflection, to see how the year has changed you. 

And once the leaves finally let go and I step out of the shadow of myself, I know that a new year has begun … 

The asters are out again, just in time for my birthday.