One of these days, I'll learn to turn the phone sideways.

The world outside is yellow. The trees in my yard and across the street turn anywhere from dull brown to bright  yellow in the fall, depending on how much rain we've had during the summer. This year they're macaroni-and-cheese yellow. 

We peered up at the trees last weekend, commenting on how odd it was they hadn't turned yet. It happens so fast. They turned and began falling a few days ago, and now my deck is carpeted in sunshine even as it the sky is gray and rainy. 

It reminds me of "All Summer in a Day," a little, knowing how quickly this beauty will explode and then fade into another winter.

The days float past quickly, benignly. I am bored without being bored. It's not the painful boredom of childhood but the foggier boredom of a hospital stay. I try to tell people what happened in my day, but nothing is really that important, and rehashing it feels unnecessary. It was a day. Pleasant. Nice weather. Yes. I think about watching television, but most television is stupid, and only when I am truly bored does this knowledge really bother me. I look at the covers of magazines when I go to pick up my prescription and know the angle and ending of every article without turning the pages. It's all so predictable. Maybe this is aging? It doesn't hurt so much as annoy me. I binge book after book looking for a new ending. For a surprise.

I am not sad about the boredom, because I know it will end soon. I can remember spending periods like this in my past, and they never last long. I can feel myself floating in it, this nothing-space, when I don't have much to contribute nor do I feel the need to take much in. My days are like the end of a Prince song, or the laser part of a Grateful Dead show, when you realize twenty minutes in that holy shit, it has been twenty minutes and I've just been standing here staring at that tree.

I leave my house only when necessary. I jog the same routes and realize as I'm coming back up my driveway I barely remember turning around at the halfway point. I find myself walking around my kitchen, shuffling items until they slot back in their proper places. We are hovering, the house and I, waiting for something to change. The leaves, maybe, or my mind. Until then, paused.

"The leaves are starting to fall, Mommy."

"Yes. That front tree will go first. It won't take long. It usually loses all its leaves a day or two after they start to drop. Then the three in the back take a lot longer."

"Maybe that's the mommy tree, showing her babies it's okay to drop their leaves: Just relax and let go."

I thought of all the layers to what she'd said, what leaves provide to a tree, what faith a tree would have to have the first time it dropped its leaves if trees have souls.

Stunned into silence, I watched the leaves flutter to the ground.