The earth has changed in such a way that I can no longer hide from the fact that autumn is at my doorstep.
Thundershowers came yesterday, and the wind and rain took dying leaves from tree branches, beat them to the ground.
Now the sun and wind are different, too – just so subtly. You can look outside the window of the computer lab I’m working in now and see it in how the leaves are moving– not as if the trees were spreading their arms wide in warm summer breezes, but holding them closer to their trunks, huddling in preparation for colder winds to come. The light filtering through the trees on my way up the hill to work this morning was muted, as if the sun has realized that its time is over.
I told him yesterday that it was as if I was part goose, and I was being silly, but I meant it. He doesn’t understand why the turning of the season affects me like it does; he doesn’t experience it the way I do. So I told him that I was part goose, and all my instincts are warning me to go south, foretelling the grim fate that awaits me if I don’t. That is how it feels.
It’s been like this as long as I can remember, but I’ve been more aware of it as I’ve grown older. Just an intense uneasiness, the feeling that something has changed, and that something is gone…
The end of August. It’s still summer, but not for long. The end of August two years ago, I conceived a baby that was never born. A baby I'll never hold in my arms, a baby I'll never see grow up. The end of August the year after that was when I wed my first husband, who is not my husband anymore. He was my first love and I am still scarred. This August ends with the death of my grandmother. She’s dying in a hospital in Missouri.
I don't want to think about my lost baby. I don't want to think about the husband who wanted to kill me. I don't want to think about death in a hospital, breathing and eating through machines, or what my grandmothers life and death mean to me. I just want to curl up and hide somewhere warm.