(October)

I wanted October to be my boyfriend. 

He whispered, “We’d be a good fit, you and I,” feathering through my hair with his long fingers of wind while my insides felt burning and crunchy, making me want to run all the way up and down him, dancing along the way. I’d been warmed and favored by other months before, but October wrapped me up in lovely bits, smelling of earth and burning leaves, a caramel color to all his complicated edges.   

Every year after, he’d come in slow, but right on time,  keeping me wondering about his next self: half pelting-storm, half still-smoothing sunlight.  I felt unsteady in his presence, never sure if he’d be sparkling and free for Saturday football or distant and stoic in his cooling.   The unknown of his pieces sewed me into him.

October liked me best in woolen tights and long boots, with cabled sweaters that I’d anxiously pull all the way down past my wrists.  I wanted to seem mysterious, but instead felt awkward, tripping over sticks he’d left in my yard in a display of his bluster  He mailed me catalogues of warm woolen things that would lay long and close on my skin.  It was to remind me of his warming breath across my cold lines, long after he’d left me in the company of much more graying things, like November.

I’d rest under the dimming oaks and he’d promise the trying winter would not be that cruel.  It was a lie, but I would be briefly pressed into believing it would be different and he’d stay.  I knew there were not enough things attend to his whims, though, and he’d have to go. I no longer tried to keep him. He was not mine to have. He was mine to borrow.  To share. 

I will see October again, but this year, I’ll be careful.  I’ll watch him from behind thick panes of sleet-streaked glass stuck between us.  If he asks for my twirling self to come dance, I will tell him,

“No, not this time.”

“No, I can’t risk falling.”

“No.”

Maybe.

(2016)

**********************

things that go down

falling off

feels like flying

until you realize

gravity is a constant event

it’s not that i mind

the downward spirals

it’s the ground rushing up

that frightens me.

-Melissa Fletcher (2013)

 

******************************

Vanish

Disappeared.

All at once, or maybe it was slowly.

Storm clouds gathered across your plains

like Oklahoma.

We could see them coming for miles:

not yet,

not yet,

and then

a downpour of your everything.

There was no shelter

even though we tried to cover you

with our cheerful,

upright

umbrellas.

Even now, they stay fully open

and…useless.

I don’t know where to look for you—

Not in deity, not in hell.

You rest in the absent minutes

stacked without you:

one on the other,

one

on

the

other.

You are impermanent—a transient,

uncurling wisp of memory.

Are you up?

Are you down?

Are you around

just the next bend?

Where has your infinity

landed?

-Melissa Fletcher (2016)