October Teaches Me

The maples don't grieve. That's the first lesson. They turn the color of everything they've been holding since April— the light they drank, the storms they swallowed, the long afternoons they stood in without moving— and then they let it go. Not reluctantly. Not with the tight fist of someone who hasn't forgiven. But the way a breath leaves when you finally stop counting. I walk the trail behind the elementary school where the oaks are doing their slow undressing and the air smells like the inside of a library if the library were on fire in the most beautiful way. The children are at recess. They run through leaves without wondering where the leaves came from. They don't yet know that falling is an act of faith— that you have to believe the branch will still be there when it's time to come back. I am learning this. Slowly. October says: you don't lose the light. You just wear it on the outside for a while before giving it back to the ground where it becomes something else entirely. Every autumn is a lesson in how to be finished with something and still call it beautiful.