A/N Title suggestions will be welcomed with open arms and bags of shiny metal coins. As usual, the lines are spaces. Someone needs to notify the site manager and make them fix this.

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Under autumn boughs

And silken strands of deadly web

She watches – brown eyes wide

As strange feet stir the golden leaves

Her skin slides smooth through sunlight

– faces in shadow –

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Shafts of evening catch the stranger

Her hands stroke the tree

Uncertain fingers catch thoughtfully against the bark

A gentle reminder that she breathes

As whispers if words she thinks she knows flit sideways

– and she reminds her heart to beat –

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Alone now she sinks to silence wrapped in roots

Her hair dreaming leaves and falling night

She hears her heartbeat slowly slow

And feels everything changing

Browned limbs shudder as she cries

– and everything is changed -

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The stranger comes again

This time dressed in greys and city shoes

She stares at the shoes, eyes fearful

Then looks up into black and falls

And in falling gives it all away

– unshod feet betray her –

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Happiness is fleeting – so are seasons

These words sink into her soul as the choice is made

Frost laden November mornings sing soft goodbyes

Or so she tells herself

As she prays to nothing and everything

– and everything and nothing answers –

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She leaves the woods.

Trembling and afraid and still falling

Her fingers wrapped around her lover's

Her eyes trace the hills and fields and it kills her

But her lover calls her angel and she's lost

– it is killing her to leave –

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Buildings and ash screen out the sky

Her window isn't enough and the grass isn't free

Everythings changed – the forest child's far from home

But the nights are starry in her mind

And sunlight kisses her city girl so gently

– the trees grow dim in memory –

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She haunts the loft apartment

The garden on the roof and the dull black throb of steel

Waiting until the city coughs her heartache home

Then forests fall to ash and nothing matters

While her lover calls her angel

– forests fall to ash –

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The years mark pages in her soul

As she reminds herself to breathe and why

– still she's falling – except it doesn't taste as sweet

From the tallest tower she can see a hilltop

City bells toll three and still she lies awake

– her city girl's asleep beside her –

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The silence of the night's white noise

The bleakness that fails to lift at dawn

She desperately fights the nothingness inside her

Now she knows the heart and soul are separate

And a broken heart is the only one that mends

– she misses the feel of leaves in her hair –

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Another autumn laughs coldly down the streets

She cannot eat – and her eyes are never dry

"I love you" paints her with despair

Because its true and she knows she cannot stay

Brown eyes fade and the city girl's in tears

– "Angel…you are dying" –

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Frost laces the windows and she can't get out of bed

Her hand is chafed from her lover's haunted lips

"I tried" an endless litany from her pale voice

They both know what happens next

So city girl grows cold

– frost writes her name in silver –

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Autumn's breath is fading

Then she runs

Haltingly, brokenly past the city gates

Till she can see the sky

And acorns roll beneath her feet

– she reminds herself once more to breathe –

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There is a stranger in the wood.

They call her name and breathe out winter

Branches stir and her heart stops

City shoes stumble on the frozen ground

The stranger falls, tears of liquid glass stain the leaves

– She turns away –