Prologue
I’ve always been a great writer. Words have always come easy to me, flowing like water, filling pages with thoughts I can’t quite contain. But this last essay? The one that holds the key to my dream? It’s different. It’s the one I can’t seem to touch, let alone mold into anything that could make sense to anyone—least of all an admissions committee. I thought I could tackle it, be clever, find a way to make it work, like all the other essays I’ve written before. But there’s a problem. This one feels impossible. It’s not just the words that are hard to find. It’s the space inside me that feels empty, like there’s a piece of me that’s gone—something I can never get back.
I thought I knew exactly what I wanted out of life: to go to my dream college, to write, to live the college experience, to find myself. I thought I figured it all out. But somehow, as life has a way of doing, it shifted on me, and I realized that there’s a piece of me I left behind without ever meaning to.
It was autumn when I first understood what it meant to lose something—and to lose it completely. The world was turning gold, and the leaves, like pieces of my heart, began to fall. I had fallen in love. And, like a bad story I didn’t know how to rewrite, I got my heart broken. As the world around me changed, so did I.
Now I sit at my desk, fingers hovering over the keyboard, the words unwilling to flow. The clock ticks. I’ve already thought of a hundred different ways to explain the pain, the growth, the lessons. But none of them feel right. None of them feel like me. They’re too neat, too packaged, too impersonal for something that cuts so deep.
And then, just like that, it hits me. Maybe the essay isn’t about the perfect ending. Maybe it’s about the imperfection itself—the way the world doesn’t always give you what you expect, but still, you find a way to keep moving.
So I turn on some lo-fi raps to settle my mind, letting the smooth beats drown out the noise of my racing thoughts, and begin to write, slowly but surely. I know this piece won’t make sense to everyone, but it makes sense to me. The title forms before I even know it: If The Leaves Were Yellow.
