Fall

Phasing

Summer is simmering down again. What’s emerging is slowness and resolution, emptiness and decay, the shedding of old skin.

I look into the mirror and ask myself: who am I now? It’s fall. No more older than before by the look of things, much to the amusement of those who know me. It’ll hit me, I reassure them, this aging thing. One day.

People around me are breaking up and breaking through, are shifting into becoming rather than being. The rest of us are snuggled beneath the certainty of weighted blankets, watching leaves surrender to their delicate nature. The ground serves them better this time of year while the sun reminds us that nothing is permanent and everything is brilliant.

It’s a truth that our eyes perfectly cup the sun. Your own are surrounded by wrinkles, roads that all lead me back to you. I want to walk them endlessly.

I’m searching for a sign, reassurance maybe. But you tell me that there is nothing more than this. Between you and me, this is enough. Clouds covering the sky. The smell of dead leaves. A happy pup between our curious feet. Walk with me.

Once you’re gone the past starts crowding in, patterns I’m familiar with now and the simultaneous impulse to retreat and reach. I lay instead, head-first into a pillow, and feel what I feel without explanation. I fall asleep and there she is, already an inhabitant of my dreams. I wake up and try not to forget, but some things don’t change.