Starlight in Autumn

Not sure why Autumn has pulled on me so hard this year in my writings but I like it.

You pull your sleeves over your hands.

I notice.

There are things I notice about you that I never tell you

because saying it all would make me sound like too much.

So I put my hands back in my pockets and look up at the stars.

I don’t need everything beautiful to last forever.

Memories can be beautiful.

Sometimes the distance between here and there makes something look more lost than it actually is.

The light still had to travel all that way.

Through whatever darkness exists between here and there.

Just to land on your cheek while you’re standing beside me complaining that you’re cold.

And I think that’s beautiful.

You don’t know I’m looking at you now.

You’re watching something happening across the street and I’m watching one strand of your hair move against your mouth.

A leaf catches against my shoe.

Another lets go somewhere above us.

Then another.

The trees aren’t afraid of becoming bare anymore.

While I have spent so much of my life trying to keep things the way they were.

People, versions of myself,

and moments I knew were already passing while I was still standing inside them.

Like a glass globe wrapped around a slice of time where wonder and uncertainty made me feel so small.

Now Autumn lets everything become only what comes next.

Gold becomes brown.

Flowers become honey.

Warm becomes cold.

Branches appear where leaves used to allow them to hide.

And none of this feels empty tonight.

You turn toward me.

For a second the light catches your eyes.

There you are.

Starlight in autumn.

Something that will one day become memory touching something completely alive right now.

I don’t need to know what season comes after this.

I don’t need to make a forever out of every beautiful thing.

Tonight I only want to stand here long enough to remember it.

The cold.

The leaves.

Your sleeves pulled over your hands.

That little cloud of breath when you laugh.

Starlight that traveled farther than I can comprehend

from a place I will never see

to arrive in this moment

where it finds you and me

exactly as we are right now.