What Fall Does

Mid-September and Simone's aunt has called three times since Tuesday. I know this because Simone told me during our overlap break today, and I know it landed on me the way it did because I have been thinking about home in that low-frequency way that always seems to start around now, not loud, not urgent, just present, like a draft under a door you thought you'd sealed.

She was doing the face. You know the one, half fond, half exhausted, the expression of someone who loves a person completely and is also very aware that it is a Thursday afternoon and there is still another hour on the clock.

The listening face.

I tried to get a picture of it and she caught me, and then she turned the phone around, which is how I ended up with a photo of myself looking quietly caught. Both of those photographs now exist. Neither of us deleted them.

I don't have anyone calling three times in one hour. That is its own kind of information, and I sat with it for a minute after Simone went back to the floor, the way fall seems to surface whatever the specific shape of your missing-home actually is, not a generic version but the real one, the one with a particular texture.

Between tasks.

For Simone it's the calls. For me it's something quieter and harder to name, which is probably why I write about the prints leaning against the kitchen wall instead of writing about this.

But here it is. The drafts are getting shorter and the days are tipping over faster and I keep thinking about the windowsill in morning light and the things on it that belong to people who aren't here anymore. Fall does this. I think it's supposed to.