It’s nearly fall.
The maple leaves are turning pink.
They’re brightening into a red that cuts the sky, like striking a match.
The flame of fall.
The patterned quilt of leaves tuck in the valley.
Making ready for winter.
The chill caresses your neck and cheeks, tugs on your scarf.
The simmering sun has broken its solitary hold and paints a shimmering hue on the moon.
Your gloved fingernails tug a little harder on the folds of your knitted cap.
The cotton stitches almost cover your eyes.
There’s rhythm in the crisp footfalls against fallen leaves and crunched beer cans.
Perhaps even a spirit in the exhales of chilled air.
It’s the season of ghosts and enchantments.
But advertising misplaces natural wonder for superhuman thrills.
If you haven’t felt the heartbeat in the trails,
go to the overgrown spaces between neighborhoods.
Get out of that paved loop.
Interrupt the relentless efficiency, and the chemicals that quicken
as soon as another task
gets ticked off.
Rest in that even pace, something you can breathe into.
You don’t need to push yourself when your body breathes itself,
and can soothe itself without needing to cling so tightly.
If anything, fall teaches us that it is the falling apart
that lays the groundwork for our eventual rise.
To grow, one needs to shed what’s already dead.
Crunch those red leaves,
tie your laces, and leave behind what haunts you–
the you that never even existed in the first place.
Danielle Koch 