Equinox

Fall:

Mornings and evenings bring a draft that nips at your bare skin just enough for a sweatshirt borrowed from someone like him, loose in the armpits and neck, in the places where a mans’ bulk fills the empty space that you leave empty. The sleeves ease past your lithe fingers, nails kept short and plain, unpainted, except for a clear topcoat. As a child you crept into your parents closet and nuzzled your father’s flannel shirts that he nestled into after work. You loved the feeling of swimming in plush fabric that smelled familiar and comfortable. You retrieve those articles of pilled clothing, faded in places and perhaps a little stretched out, from boys who toss them to you from folded pile or heap on the floor. And when they aren’t looking you hold the cuffs up to your nose and inhale the scent of fabric softener and old cologne. You love the smell of men and fall leaves through an open window.

And the sun burnishes saturating the earth with a dulled warmth left over from summer, the air, crisp as the bite of a ripe apple, teeth gnashing at the rouged skin to get to the lush center. The colors are incandescent in the middle of the day, those sharp wafts of air reminding us of change. Our senses reawakened.

September reminds us of the beauty in simple un-adornment. Left over russet skin from summer afternoons, still glowing around the edges, an old photograph or news clipping, touched only by a few swipes of mascara and lip balm, letting your face peer through the smattering of freckles that can be seen if someone was in deep conversation with you, inches from your neck or cheek. Fall reminds us of the innate beauty, forgotten with our youthful sincerity.

And these days you’d rather remember this way, closing your eyes against the sun and inhaling roasting coffee, turmeric and colors shifting before you.

Summer:

It came with the rain. You were glad to be situated on a campus perched atop a hill, because, if nothing else, you looked out over the trees and the grassy practice fields, above it all for once, and no one could pluck you off that higher place. It felt like home up there even in the swampy humidity of Midwest July that left an opalescent veil on everything. We were like sea creatures in a tidal pool. The mornings blazed early into the afternoon, then pluming clouds that progressed into gray as if shaded repeatedly by a charcoal pencil. Then, a cool lick of air behind your ear in late afternoon as you wandered back towards your dorm. You paused near the cement steps and watched the tops of the trees sway and fluttering like the fabric of a skirt. The atmosphere suspended around you. For a moment you think someone lingers at your back having, but you turn and only the unlit lamppost greets you, a few wrappers come to rest at its base. You descend onto the steps that hovered over the practice fields below and follow the clouds that dart a crossed the sky, grumbling as the shadows around you disappear with the sun.

And the sky opens up.

You watched the rain come in perforated sheets a crossed the land. You reach out a few inches and feel the droplets lap at your fingers. The smell of rain sweet like a new bar of soap just dampened by a hot shower. And you did not bother to move, the rain, making ellipse on the pavement, coming harder, slicking your t-shirt to your breasts. And it was warm and still. As if the world jut shared a secret and you drank it in. The rain slowed. You stood there dripping and alive.