The Crisp Breath of Decay

The smell of autumn is not a scent; it is a damp, earthy weight that settles in the back of the throat. It is the smell of things letting go. I remember walking through woods where the ground felt like a brittle, golden skin beneath my boots, crunching with a sound like breaking glass. There is a specific cold that bites at the fingertips, a sharp, metallic chill that reminds you that everything eventually returns to the soil. We spend our lives trying to hold onto the green, the vibrant, the growing, but there is a profound, quiet relief in the falling. To be strewn is not to be lost; it is to be surrendered. My skin still remembers the dry, papery texture of a leaf turning to dust between my thumb and forefinger, a fragile history crumbling into nothing. When the world stops reaching for the sun, what does it feel like to finally touch the earth?

Kurien Koshy Yohannan has captured this transition in his beautiful image titled Strewn. The way the earth holds these remnants invites a sense of stillness I find hard to leave. Does the ground feel as soft to you as it looks?