One of the strangest things about autumn is how you can watch it deteriorate.
It comes in so bright and beautiful, so alive, despite it all. Everything is so colorful. The world seems to be bursting at the seams in anticipation of a celebration; posing for a picture of a moment in time that will gone all too soon. Each time the wind blows it feels like a pleasant hello, the leaves waving.
The world feels full of potential. And acceptance. So much acceptance.
Halloween comes, and then it goes. And suddenly everything goes strangely silent. From magical to mournful. It's like being at an amusement park after it closes. Everything is still there, it's just so quiet and hollow now. Eerie, almost. Desolate in a way that doesn't quite make sense. It looks almost the same...shouldn't it feel the same? The last leaves flutter to the ground, and I can't tell if they're sad to go or desperate to catch up to their brethren. Afraid to be left behind.
Then suddenly they are brown and brittle. The trees are much barer now, black against the sky, and the little dots of color that once painted the sky are fewer and fewer. And darker. Always darker.
The sky turns grayer, but somehow it doesn't feel quite as spooky anymore. It feels like the universe whispering 'I'm tired'. A type of gloom that comes with exhaustion. When a party is over.
The air starts to change. It's no longer a sudden chill, or a howling breeze that makes you question if a ghost has just passed you by. It's the icy breath of winter, beginning to drown out autumn's death rattle. It's suddenly consistently cold, sometimes too cold to really spend time outside.
And then Thanksgiving comes. Autumn is acknowledged, one final time. And then suddenly, all of the pumpkins and scarecrows that survived the mass rip-down of Halloween in early November, are finally gone. Some of them just disappear. And some of the pumpkins will wait by the roadside to be collected with the trash one early December morning. I see them and it feels like my heart is cracking in two.
And then the trees are completely bare, and Christmas invades everywhere it already hasn't. It's still autumn for twenty-something days, but no one cares anymore. It's Christmas time now, and that means it's winter, even if it isn't.
And I feel like I'm standing at a loved one's bedside, watching the light slowly leave them.
The only consolation is knowing my beloved autumn will be back.
But it's never soon enough.
And it never seems further away than when it's still technically here.
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