Autumn in the park is the autumn of life for a man sorely tested by fate. As nature sheds its leaves, carpetting the ground in rust and gold, the man sits alone on a secluded bench. To him, the crunch of dry leaves is no symphony; it is merely the sound of something dying.

He was raised amidst the gnawing pangs of hunger and the shards of a stolen childhood in Villa 31—one of Argentina’s villas miserias—where poverty ran so deep that even rubbish seemed a precious treasure in his dreams. Today, he leads a life of comfort, yet he has forged an armour of cynicism to shield himself from a world that has always failed him; a world he now despises for its lack of values and its habitual wastefulness.

The greyness of his gaze is suddenly broken by the sight of a young girl who seems crafted from light and wind. She does not merely walk; she dances through the avenues, beholding every leaf as if it were a jewel.

His autumn is a dull monotone; hers is an explosion of colour. She is vibrant, almost watercoloured with warm hues and fluid lines; he is defined by sharp edges, desaturated tones, and ghosts that seem to weigh physically upon his shoulders.

The girl sits beside him and, with a vitality that borders on the irritating, attempts to show him the beauty of nature and of life. But the man’s heart is too parched a ground. For every ray of sunshine she offers, he counters with the shadow of a past betrayal or the weight of a former deprivation.

They never truly look at one another; each speaks while staring fixedly into their own private void. Only for the briefest of moments do their eyes meet. It feels like a tiny breach in his heart… a faint smile flickering in contrast to her crystalline laughter.

Yet, his negativity is a dense fog that begins, slowly, to dim even the girl’s colours. Despite his bitterness, she continues to radiate light until the friction between them becomes unbearable.

The girl vanishes, and the man is left alone. Grief begins to wash away all the colours she had painted around him, leaving him in the monochromatic silence of one who has suffered too much to ever trust in beauty again.