Autumn

Something happens in September. The season stretches and eases its grip on the light, bathing everything in soft gold.

The air changes. The sun, still warm on your skin but now with cool air to fill your lungs.

Mist and fog creep into mornings and evenings, hanging like spider webs over the dew damp fields and rivers. At night, muting the streetlights to a gentle glow; throwing a soft blanket over sounds. Smells of wet pine and wood fires filter their way to you through the drizzle.

There is a pulse-quickening sense of new beginnings; potential. But also loss, an ache for what’s passed, heightened by the seasonal breakdown of everything around you.

Leaves change colour to create an impossible tapestry and you try to hold the colours in your mind before they fall, fix the memory to last you through the year, until the next time.

A photograph would never be enough.