There was a tree beside a road.
It was an old tree.
Nobody knew how old.
Every spring, green leaves appeared along its branches.
Every summer, the leaves grew larger.
Every autumn, some of them turned yellow.
Some turned red.
Some turned brown.
And then they fell.
The tree did not seem surprised.
One morning in autumn, a single yellow leaf came loose.
It floated down.
It landed on the road.
A bus went past.
The leaf moved.
It travelled a little way along the road, then stopped beside the kerb.
A man walking to work stepped over it.
A dog sniffed it.
The dog went on.
A bicycle went past.
The leaf moved again.
It crossed the pavement and came to rest against a wall.
That afternoon, it rained.
The leaf became wet.
It stayed beside the wall.
The next morning, a girl walking to school saw it.
She stopped.
She picked it up.
It was very yellow.
She held it against the light.
She could see the little veins running through it.
She put it in her schoolbook.
At school, she showed it to her teacher.
“It's a leaf,” said the teacher.
“I know.”
The teacher smiled.
The girl put it carefully between two pages.
That afternoon, she carried the book home.
She put it on a shelf.
The leaf stayed there.
Outside, the tree lost more leaves.
Winter came.
The branches became bare.
Rain fell.
The wind blew.
Sometimes birds sat on the branches.
Sometimes they flew away.
The tree stood beside the road.
Nobody looked at it for very long.
Spring came.
Small green leaves appeared.
Then more.
Then hundreds.
The tree became green again.
One afternoon, the girl opened her schoolbook.
The yellow leaf was still there.
It had become dry and fragile.
She touched it carefully.
A small piece broke away.
She stopped touching it.
For a long time she looked at it.
Then she closed the book.
Years passed.
The girl grew older.
She moved to another house.
She took the schoolbook with her.
The leaf remained between its pages.
The tree beside the road grew larger.
One autumn, another yellow leaf came loose.
It floated down.
It landed on the road.
A bus went past.
The leaf moved.
It travelled a little way along the road, then stopped beside the kerb.
Nobody picked it up.
The wind carried it into the grass.
It disappeared beneath the fallen leaves.
The tree stood beside the road.
It lost another leaf.
And another.
And another.
No one noticed the particular moment when the tree became winter.
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