September Followed Through

The temperature dropped sometime between Tuesday climbing and Wednesday yoga and I did not notice until I was already outside this morning with a scarf I'd grabbed mostly out of habit. Then I stopped. Stood on the sidewalk and actually confirmed it. The light was low and coming in sideways and the air had that specific quality that September occasionally threatens and rarely delivers, cool without being cold, the kind of morning that makes you stand still longer than you need to.

Simone was already at the corner when I got there. She had her hands loose at her sides, no urgency, looking down the street in the way you do when the street is doing something worth looking at. Neither of us said much for a minute. That was fine. The light was doing enough.

Looking at whatever September is doing down the block.

At some point I picked up a leaf from the curb. I'm not going to defend this. It was a dry sycamore leaf and it had caught the morning light at the edge and I wanted to look at it and so I looked at it. Simone's expression was everything it needed to be.

She picked it up. I'm not explaining further.

I've been thinking lately about what it costs, the waiting for a season to be real. August keeps insisting it's still itself and then one morning it isn't, and you're standing on a sidewalk holding a leaf like evidence. The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. The cord is still on the windowsill. The light through the kitchen window is doing something it wasn't doing last week, lower, slower, the way it gets when the year is rounding a corner. I'll take that. I'll take all of it.