In amongst the decay of autumn, Saskia McCracken finds signs of new life.

_{Photo: Eugene Golovesov}

The dead stalks of last years’ geraniums reach up like empty hands from wet flower beds. Their red and pink petals have long since been taken down beneath the soil by worms who turn in the dark among the roots. Tonight I will take the test, discover if new life turns, small as a poppy seed, in the dark of my body. For now I am in the tenement garden. Autumn is here and the trees are naked. Leaves gather in heaps by the fence, form skirts around the base of each wheelie bin. A few weeks ago these chestnut and sycamore leaves blew back and forth across the browning ground, in spirals and updraughts, handfuls of green, gold, red. They lost their colour in the rains that followed. Each drifting leaf was soaked and weighed down into the heaps around me. Dark as the mud that was once grass, shimmering and moist. I kneel, grasp the rotting matter in both hands.

Friends of mine have asked for leaf mould to use as mulch in their allotment. They will use it to blanket their raised beds, keeping the earth warm, feeding the soil, the worms. They will protect the growing root vegetables that sleep beneath, guarding them from biting frost. My friends are hoping for potatoes, carrots and parsnips next year. I am hoping for something sweeter, more secret, to bloom. I’m hoping for something to nurture inside. Just like they do their young greens, keeping them indoors, safe from the cold and the slugs. The rest of the sweet rotting leaf litter will make good compost, rich layers of humus between uprooted weeds, the curling peel of apples and potatoes, the remains of each week’s fruits and vegetables. It is pumpkin season and they, too, will have scooped out white seeds bound in stringy orange webs, to carve faces that flicker with candlelight in the dark. Some seeds will break down in the compost, some will feed the blackbirds that hop, bright eyed and yellow beaked, amongst the bare branches of their allotment, and of my garden. 

I crouch by the railings, clumsy in gardening gloves, and scoop great handfuls of wet leaves into a thick bin liner. The leaves hold their structure until I pick them up. Then they break apart, from chestnut teardrop and maple-like sycamore, into lumpen shapes. Some form thick wedges that yawn open on one side like a book left out in the rain. Sodden, dark, illegible pages. They have lost their veins, the fine details of their form. The edges crumble softly  away. I place a few handfuls in my bare flower beds and pots, around the bones of the geraniums that I doubt can be revived. I’ve watched grey squirrels bury their fortunes here. They dig away the earth, tails twitching, then pat down the soil with their forepaws, glance about to see if anyone is watching. This never happens when I’m in the garden, only when I stand by the window, where they don’t see me watching. I wonder what kinds of seeds they have hidden. If they will be dug up and eaten later, in lean times, if they will germinate in the spring, peeping out through the remains of the decaying mulch. Or if my body, like each seed, will keep its secret future furled.

Around the beds and empty flower pots, leaves rot and gleam in the rain. I inhale the scent of wet earth, petrichor. My breath forms thin clouds. Above me, a solid grey sky permits little light, no blue. Soon the ground will freeze and harden, with life unable to break through from beneath. Any leaves left will glitter with frost. They say there will be snow this year.  Perhaps the garden will be dusted with white, its edges softened. They say too, that there will be storms. That gales will rip everything bare, will bend the branches and throw the bins about the garden, so that they fall open and spill their contents, the wind whipping up empty packaging to twirl furiously, in a violent imitation of the leaves that danced here in the early autumn. 

For now, the garden is still, damp, only a slight chill in the air. My cheeks feel pink, but my hands are warm and busy, as I fill another bag. I could take the test now, but I want to savour the anticipation, the possibility. I am not ready to be disappointed. A robin watches me from further along the fence. Its red chest looks and bright among the dull, pale colours around us. The gardener’s friend, they say. The bird’s head is cocked. He’s hoping, I suppose, that I will unearth some worms. Hoping for the tug and feast my work promises. I pause. Root through the mulch to see if there are any. I find none. No pink twists of life unearthed by my awkward gloved fingers. 

But there, amongst the mulch, is a clutch of eggs, far smaller and rounder than any bird’s. Miniature translucent moons. An omen. I wonder who and what they could belong to – I’ve never seen anything like this before. The size of a lentil. They are too big, surely, to belong to an insect. A worm’s offspring, perhaps? The parent buried deep in the earth, safe from the robin? I scan the ground, the plant pots. Hidden behind one of them, clinging to terracotta, is a leopard slug. I can tell by its distinctive pattern, the dark smudges in lines along its pale back. The leopard print of a large, fierce predator on the body of a small, helpless, creature. Bald as a tongue. A silvery trail streaks the terracotta. The slug waves its eye stalks slowly, gently. I read somewhere that they are hermaphrodites. It sits there, not far from its eggs, both mother and father, and awaits each tiny slug within. It is time. I place a pile of sodden leaves over the eggs to keep them warm and safe from the robin, take my bags of leaf mulch, and leave the garden to the coming winter, the coming spring.

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‘Tender Omens’ was shortlisted for this year’s Anne Brown Essay Prize.

Saskia McCracken is a poet and author. Her publications include poetry pamphlets ‘Imperative Utopia’ (-algia press), ‘Cyanotypes’ (Dancing Girl Press), and ‘Common Name’ (Osmosis Press), fiction pamphlet ‘The King of Birds’ (Hickathrift Press), and short story collection ‘Zero Hours’ (Broken Sleep Books). She is currently completing her nature writing debut ‘Awful Creatures: Encounters with Britain’s Unlovable Animals’ (Bloomsbury Wildlife 2027).