My leaves of traits aren't gone. They haven't wilted or crumbled in time. Leaves do change slower or faster than us. Seasons manage that. The way the plant life add more to the world. But us, no, we change faster than the leaves. No seasons to tell us when to change,we just do. When it all started, we all change immediately or we die.

It's change or die.

I changed.

But some of me still dies when I do change.

What happens when the leaves leave the tree in the winter? Do they change? Or just fall just because they give up?

I'm going to experience the seasons, but only three.

I will not give up and become a barren tree.

A side of me still hides in the depths of change. It's the artistic side. The drawing I used to do in my cell, the deep-thought poetry and writing in my journal that I found in an old Barnes And Noble book store.

We change for pain. We adapt like animals in a new climate, and we all adapt differently.

In a good way like Dale,

Or In an evil way like The Governor.

I'm just a tree. With leaves of change.

As I begin the long trek on the road, I take a leaf from every tree nearest to a sign. I call it leaving. (See what I did there?)

And once I saw the sign—Hitchhikers may be escaped convicts—I start sprinting as fast as I can down the road, letting the leaves float away with the wind behind me.

I'm a barren tree waiting for springtime to come.

I grasp my knife and draw it as a walker moans and stumbles toward me. I stab it in the head and tuck a leaf in its hand. That person didn't change though, they turned. They lost the leaves. Their tree become leafless and lifeless.

I'm not going to let that happen to anybody anymore.