Gerald Made a Decision

November second. Gerald dropped a leaf.

One leaf. A single yellow one, perfect and flat, lying on the tile directly below the windowsill this morning. I found it when I came in for coffee. I stood there for, I don't know, a full minute, just looking at it. The rest of him looks fine. The trailing vine is still doing its trailing-vine thing, still grazing the shelf below the pot the way it has been since July. But somewhere between yesterday and this morning he decided to let one go, and there it was.

I picked it up eventually. Held it up to the window light to see if it was telling me something specific, underwatered, overwatered, cold draft from the window, just a leaf being a leaf.

The evidence.

The ones he keeps are greener than I remembered. The stem where this one was is just a clean little nothing now. I don't actually know what I was looking for. Some confirmation that I'd been paying the right kind of attention, probably.

I put the leaf on the sill next to the cord.

Gerald, are you okay.

Not as a decision. Just somewhere to put it while I thought about it. It's still there. Gerald is fine. I swept nothing up. The morning continued.