November

Nothing in November loves me, not the air like a wet knife hacking at my skin through all the heavy layers, bulkiness of walking. Not the leaves that fall like paratroopers, all bright with optimism, floating like feathers like windsailing seagulls as if it’s fun, this challenge. But none of them are going to make it, none of them. They’re all going to land as rusty as monarch butterflies and flutter about the ground a while, till the rain pins them down, binds them to the mud and their flesh rots from their bones and they become indistinguishable, like the war heroes my grandfather knew, long forgotten, never known by bright faced little children who prance about in fallen leaves, not hearing the screams for the crunch. Not the sky like steel wool, grim and gritty, rasping the earth. Not the dark mornings or the dark afternoons, when all the light there is is yellow and artificial, jaundiced. Not the grass that soaks my shoes, but I have to cross, I have to. Not the bountiful rain that overruns the reservoirs and turns the tapwater brown and pulls the sides off mountains to bury highways and pour sludge into rivers. Not the bare bones of trees already sleeping. Nothing in November loves me.