this imploding heart

so sweet, and so cold

In this season (but when I was young) the trees were still green, but they covered the ground with prickly things. Pinecones for kicking all the way to school and enough pineneedles to make igloos. Pineneedle igloos with inhabitants of children and slugs and stinkbugs.

"Stinkbugs!" I said to him the other morning. "Did you have stinkbugs where you grew up?"

"We had....They smell bad, I assume?"

"They do when you squish 'em. When they'd get in the classroom we'd take them outside instead of squishing them, they stunk so bad."

And in this season I would try my costume on. I would try it on for anyone who came over. The Jehova's Witness friend of my mother's came over to visit, and so I ran to my room and TA DA! Witch Costume *including* terrible mole! I couldn't understand why my mother was so embarrassed, until later. In this season, I learned to be sensitive to other's beliefs.

And this is the time for birds. Pickup truck and new boots that squnch my toes, this is the time for watching the roads and flinching when my father aims and fires. We find a packhorse who broke a leg on the trail and was shot and left. I learn the stench of death. As my father strikes a bird body against his thigh to send it's innards into the woods, I notice crows and sparrows eating at the dead horse, and I understand the life cycle.

"You know what I really want?" this is not really a question, but he offers a guess.

"Hm. Pirate ship?"

"Close. I want my body to be abandoned in the woods when I die."

Romance! This was the season of romance. Of first kisses on fire escapes and meet me under the bleachers. 'Do you Like me? Yes No. Lets go out? Yes No.'
Notes folded into intricate shapes and re-read to every friend. In truth? I only loved the boys I loved in Autumn.

And even now, the end of October offers some kind of mystery. Some promise of intrigue, growth, death, love. Whatever chooses to haunt you, don't let it pass. Jump out and spook it.

Posted by Sonya at October 27, 2006 08:09 PM