The Anatomy of Change

Kashvi Arya, ’29

I had never seen the world redden itself this way—
trees surrendering to fire without fear,
the ground quilting itself in rust and gold,
the air sharp with endings that did not weep.

Back home, seasons meant heat, rain, heat again—
a cycle that returned like a promise kept.
But here, the earth performs disappearance as art.
Every branch rehearses emptiness,
every leaf dies brighter than it lived.

I walk through it like a witness,
my eyes still tuned to monsoons and mango groves,
trying to learn this new language of decay,
this gospel of letting go.

Even the wind feels curated—
cold, deliberate,
a hand turning my face toward the unknown.
Pumpkins grin from porches
with the patience of creatures who know
that transformation always comes disguised.

And beneath it all,
I feel myself split open—
not with grief, but with awe.
What else might I shed?
Which pieces of me will burn into color,
which roots will loosen,
which silences will grow into wings?

At night, the campus hums with lanterns of another kind—
plastic, orange, stitched with cobwebs.
I do not know their histories,
but I walk among them anyway,
learning that belonging sometimes begins
in the willingness to wander
through someone else’s harvest of shadows.

This is my first autumn,
and already I understand:
the future is not a straight line but a forest,
each step sinking into leaves that whisper—
you are allowed to begin again,
you are allowed to love what you do not yet know,
you are allowed to change in colors
no one has ever seen on you before.