(There’s something off about this moment, a beauty mark on the day. I’m feeling small and alone, far away from home and homesick for my car.)

 

it is late october and a discarded napkin 

swirls in the wind, imitating a fallen leaf. 

it is late october and the girl

who i wanted to fall in love with

will never grin at me as she drinks

from my lukewarm latte or hold my gaze

before she kisses me goodnight again. 

but a flash of her passes by and

i think of a late october spent 

in the arms of a lover, in old cloth armchairs

in old stone buildings watching old 

chipped windowsills collect freshly-falling leaves.

 

it is late october and fall slips into winter, 

fall harvest abundance fading 

into unfamiliar brushstroke branches.

i sit  in a patch of shade beneath an ivy branch,

watching buggies roam the golf course before me.

a grove of trees sprouts out of the fairway,

a faraway grotto to explore some day, not today.

i told my roommate, yesterday, that i wished 

my life were boring. that i could spend my days

drifting through bookstores and watching pigeons flock.

not folding into myself, not clutching at my chest every time 

i see a mess of curled brown hair, wondering 

if it is her and at once hoping it is not. 

 

it is late october and

my ear piercing is irritated from when she bit it, not 

knowing that it was fresh. it is late october and 

my piercer told me to get them checked out by

september, but i do not have a car—not here, at least—

and every twinge of discomfort, every accidental 

brush of the metal is a reminder. 

 

it is late october and i miss home. 

nighttime drives under yellowed street lights and 

walmart trips to buy microwave popcorn and

july. a birthday party that ends too soon, my kitchen 

full of hometown friends learning to make dumplings and 

my mother at the stove, boiling and steaming and frying. 

 

it is late october and i am reminiscing about easy 

love and tight hugs. crowding around tables for 

board game night at a friend’s house, the last one before

he leaves for college in northern england. i dread this 

northern winter and its brutish cold and too-early sunsets,

but i am warm, still, in borrowed jackets and shared mugs of tea, 

skating down poorly-paved streets and sharing

movie nights with friends i only met two months ago but i think

i will probably have for a lifetime. 

 

it is late october and the leaves lining the streets are gorgeous  

and the trees incandescent, radiant but deferring to the season, 

accepting defeat for just three short months. and i 

will be glad when they return, verdant sprigs from 

frost-gray branches, not rebirth but re-becoming.

 

and i know that there will be something freeing about that day,

but i will just have to wait.