I’m writing to the October that slips from my grip.
Not the collection of days that sulk in the belly of the year,
where we harvest our hopes for the winter to come.
Not those orange weeks filled with idle worship.
But to the cradle that Anne of Green Gables told me to hold so closely.
The way that your air, rich with manure, swaddled me slowly as I tumbled through the suburbs to the tops of stone temples.
Their dedication lost to running shoes and my last slice of birthday cake,
napkin wrapped and nestled between penknife and paper.
Hunched over fog and faerie houses we divided and shared a feast in thirds.
Your carnivorous nights that, once the day melts away,
are stripped down to nothing but a buttermilk moon.
The very same moon that my daughter’s daughter will summer under by the October seashore. Sun shaded by the aeroplanes just close enough to caress.
Returning home from long days lapping up the milk from the milky way.
I’ll miss your mornings suspended in cable knit tights.
The feel of your fraying hands across the fibre optics of my skin
as I’d fail to ready myself for each differing day
of venturing, tupperware in hand, to collect your post-September delights.
We’ll reminisce about your unmoving red streak in the sky
as we bite into frosted figs and winter stone fruits.
All these that felt precious at a time when we farmed what didn’t terrify us.
Before mountains became nothing but silhouettes of sunken clouds,
when we simply let the tsunami-esque sleeping giants lie.
In your absence I lie alone, not yet cold.
I’ve spent the nights that once were yours pacing across paper cut-outs,
darning the days from November to nine.
Forever wondering why only in the cover of your darkest hours I always felt so seen. 30/11/22
