READ THIS CRAP - Worthless Thoughts and Aspirations

We Fell Like Leaves

I said it and I meant it, and there's no way I'm taking it back now. Even if I ever talk to her again, there's nothing I can ever say that will repair our lives. Because they're broken, and missing pieces in places I never knew existed.
It started with a goose.
Not the typical "mother goose" goose, but a greyish-brown, white speckled, long-necked, honking Canadian goose. The best and the worst kind. Oh, and there was a girl, too. And me.
I was in my first year of university; living with six other strangers and already drowning in student debt. Within the first week of school, I'd decided to work at a small café on the edge of campus, busy with Torontonian's rushing in and out, coffee order in hand.
On my first day of work, my boss handed me a spray bottle and told me to tuck it into the belt of my fresh, black apron. "Geese control," she nodded wisely when I'd asked why, as if that explained everything.
And so I took her advice and the bottle and put it away, wondering when I would get the chance to put it to good use.
The day came about two weeks later in mid-September. It was a brisk day with the chill of October soon-to-come riding on the wind. It seemed like just another day at work, and nothing extraordinary ever happened on my shift.
Until I saw her.
Her hair was a beautiful shimmer of red in the sunlight, her eyes shining with a green hue. Within moments of hearing her voice ring out, "Help!" frantically, I was enamoured. She was beautiful, she was everything I could ever want, and she was—
Being attacked by geese.
The future mother of my children who had been sitting outside on the patio alone was now standing with one foot on the black iron chair and the other on the arm rest, with a gaggle of geese surrounding the legs of the table around her. With each honk that come out of their beaks, the poor girl cringed and tried to climb further up on the chair.
This was my moment.
I distinctly remember whipping off my apron with a dramatic flourish, and knocking over several cups of coffee in order to rush to her rescue. I burst out the café doors just as the lead goose flexed its neck and honked twice, ready to pounce.
"No!" I had cried, throwing myself in front of the gaggle whilst pulling out the spray bottle mid-flight. I heard the geese squawk madly at me and desperately spritzed them with water, squeezing the spray-trigger as fast as was humanly possible. I still remember feeling the gusts of wind as the geese took off in flight, and something was grabbing my shoulder— oh GOD was it a goose seeking revenge? I grabbed it, only
to be holding the hand of the pretty girl I'd saved.
"Thank you," she'd said. And then blushed.
What she'd really meant was that I was her dashing hero, armed with a spray bottle. There was no need for her to say it, she told told me with her sparkling eyes.
I was in love.
Needless to say, I lost my job. But I'd found her. She was the warmest person I knew, and when she told me her name I wasn't even surprised because it was a warm, and bright and reminded me of maple leaves falling in Autumn, just like she did.
Like those leaves, love falls. And back then we caught all of it.