What is Fall?

Fall is watching your breathe asphyxiate in front of you

Along with ever notion you’ve ever grown up with.

Fall is Autumn – and Autumn is Fall

and the way words and gestures and phrases

never are what they mean or mean what they are.

 

Fall is mostly muddy murky skies

Air thick and matted, tired and dirty

The morning chill so strong it reaches through

The layers of skin and clutches at your bones and skin

Almost as lecherous as Winter –

But not quite.

Fall is unsteadily learning to bid farewell

to true sunlight.

 

Fall is the absence of a notion of you.

Surety got bored of perching on my shoulder –

She flew off and I don’t know when to expect her back.

So I’m trying to pass time by walking down paths

I’d told myself earlier I’d enjoy.

But I’ve got fine, stinging scars on my legs, arms and face

From bramble patches which are covered in white, poisonous berries.

I’m limping from having twisted my ankles

Stumbling over rocks which I had taken

To be stepping stones.

 

Fall is stillness.

There is no real traffic, no real people, no real warmth,

No real home, no real dreams.

What do you do

When what you couldn’t dare dream of becomes your reality?

Do you let yourself be scurged by it?

Or savour it?

I don’t quite know yet.

 

Fall is messaging him or her or them

And realizing it is not just a mere matter of continents.

I had a dream last night

That while I was sleeping you were falling in love

That Time made fools of us both

Not by the passage of weeks and moths

But by the difference in minutes and days.

 

Fall is spending whole days in your room

Bereft of social interactions

Hearing no voice but your own

Smoky from the tobacco, stained grey from tiredness

Reciting your own words and thoughts

Trying miserably to create something made of silver.

Learning to lovingly shape your lips around

Literary monsters which you created.

Trying not to make the same mistakes that Frankenstein did.

Maybe if I manage it, both of us will survive.

 

Fall is having numb fingers all the time.

Watching your words try to foolishly outrun

both idealism and reality

and ending up breaking their legs instead.

A racehorse with nothing left.

 

You watch them from a distance.

They stagger in the dust hoping someone will have mercy

And give them the voice necessary to make

Their screams heard.

Their jaws opening and closing,

Throats working, knees bleeding eyes empty.

Shock at the lack of sound has robbed them of emotion.

And so my poor, out of control racehorses wait,

Shuddering on the ground.

Unable to deal with how my Reality

Has repositioned itself.

But lame horses should be put to sleep.

I think it is kinder.

 

Fall is the beauty of the preparation of finality.

There is a merciful promise of eventuality

Which makes everything all the more bearable.

 

Fall is the realization

That time has screwed me over again

That Faith has made a fool of me once more

That I find courage to exist in the fact that one day I will not.

 

Fall is the beginning of the end.

It heralds Winter

Who approaches me slowly, deliberately

Smiling down on me

As I lie amongst the last of the

Falling leaves.