It rains. A little, a lot, endlessly.
You felt sullen this morning, or perhaps restless. A shadow lingered on your face, a soft gloom from the very start. I saw you swaying between whispers of light and dark, as if you had forgotten where to lean. I saw you wrap yourself in heaviness, filling every hollow until you could hold no more.
Rain lashes the boudoir window. It is an assault, a deluge that lasts only moments. A handful of magnetic minutes when everything melts and bends.
Dear November. How good it is to see you again. The wind strikes my face and scatters the sketches I left unfinished. The memory of our walks shivers like water on the edge of a boil, urging me to hurl myself headlong into you, into your spectacle, into your sleeves that clasp me and burn my cheeks red.
The scent you wear is sharp, briny, earthy. It has settled into the sheet I left outside at your mercy. A plain cloth pinned in the morning, tossed and beaten by your rain bursts until the evening falls.
The flowers are dry, browned, collapsed. They look gone, yet linger. I bound a few before their colors drained away, tied their stems and hung them from the living room beam, pausing to admire them. Goldenrod, everlasting, yarrow. Suspended, weightless, coherent.
I wear my wide Dijon scarf. Its threads cradle my shoulders like the sea spray fogging glass and salting the motionless cars. Like waves licking coves, unraveling at the feet of passersby.
Your breath seeps through the house, pressing against the door until it shudders, swaying the birds who come one by one to peck the seeds I left in a chipped plate. Sharp beaks, ruffled feathers. Round bellies, clumsy manners. Greedy or anxious, they quarrel over the feast, then leap into your next gust as if it were a waiting train. A blink, a gasp, and they are elsewhere, parachuted into your sky. Their little engines beating in perfect harmony with you.
The clouds stretch, unfurl, and I long to do the same. To offer my cheekbones to the fading sun and drift with the rhythm of your days. If I could choose, I would remain here. Something is intoxicating in this hour. Perhaps the wind, or the hush that turns me inward. The first woodsmoke curling, the heavy sky, the thin ice of morning. With one drowsy glance I see the frost you've laid upon the leaves drooping on the ledge and I cannot help but smile. The blue dawn carries me away. Autumn unfurls its charms before my cooling breath, inside a mind that shakes itself awake beside it.
