I can feel it lurking beyond the horizon
before August draws its last breath,
the plummeting moods that threaten
to blow in with the coming of leaf fall,
spirits ebbing away with the last of the heat.
September dawns to the sound of fanfare,
statuses hailing the arrival of autumn,
proclaiming it to be the superior season,
proof of the beauty of change,
and I wish I could revel in it with them,
but it’s a fanfare that I cannot hear.
October finds me on constant guard
against the melancholy which could
arrive any moment or simply pass me by,
no way of knowing if or when,
sometimes it settles without my knowing,
the slow fray of temper and fast ebb of energy,
workdays swallowing short-lived daylight,
candles of an evening the only light I see,
hours whiled away in idle hibernation.
November keeps me distracted with
showers of sparks and twinkling lights,
December with festive promise,
but danger lies on New Year’s other side,
in that frigid no man’s land of a month
when all celebrations have passed,
January drags it’s heels, riddled with
anniversaries of events I’d rather forget,
mind rewired by shadows of long-ago sorrows,
even longer in the unlearning.
I sometimes…
