Birth of Autumn

It’s the first of October; you can tell by the wind that rages in waves, dancing on branches and fondling leaves that have only just begun to lose their green. Almost as if the earth knows that September has died, blue skies are veiled in pale and dark clouds that sometimes release heavy raindrops and sometimes roll at fearsome speeds across the sky, but mostly hover and stare at you as you stare back, mourning the loss of summer, and reveling in the birth of autumn. You squint as raging wind rushes over you with howling violence; your breath stalls, your lungs momentarily overwhelmed by the force, and you smile at the moist scent of earth that swarms about you.

You love autumn, and not merely for the orange and plum and crimson leaves, or the fog or silver moon; you love autumn for its darkness, for its brash honesty, and for the fact that it knows and keeps your innermost secrets. You are the truest version of yourself in the autumn months, and they neither judge nor rebuke you for it. They accept you as their own, as that is who you are. As the winds knock leaves and branches against your house, you wonder if, perhaps, you were a witch in a past life, or if you’re becoming a ghost of the life that died with September? Or maybe autumn’s unconditional acceptance has less to do with what you were or are, but rather with what you will become?