September

You and me, rain and sun making quick rainbows against stormy grey. Occasional bursts of blue refusing to give way to white winter skies, crunchy leaves and dry sticks. An everyday task in a new home, looking for something in a drawer, and the first fireworks pop and crackle somewhere in the distance and I get goosebumps. He hears them too but he doesn't know what it does for me, that I'm trembling as I feel myself cross from summer to autumn and I'm both scared and excited. A little ache in my chest of things past, each year at this time, but it feels okay to keep these things to myself. Songs I can barely listen to and others I can't get through the day without, all more important and beautiful and heartbreaking than the endless sickly summer soundtrack. Things I've put off 'til tomorrow all year - tomorrow's here now. Decisions to be made and faced, and items to be ticked off lists torn from notebooks and scattered around the flat in places they're most likely to be seen and actioned. The urgent need for plans, things to fill the days scribbled on calendars, the threatening chasm a decision might leave in my life, but nothing lasts forever and sometimes you just have to let things go and watch them take on new shapes. My head filled with all these things I want to do and the still-new excitement of sharing them with someone, then with the worry that I don't have enough time, why didn't I think of this when I was young and bored? What if my time comes early and I haven't finished what I'm supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Maybe I don't want to know really.

We dance and snake around each other and hold hands and you tease and let go but you catch me, and you lead me safely over the season edge and plonk me down somewhere new, and with a cheeky wink and a nod in the right direction you're gone again and it's cold and crisp and all a little too clear. And for the rest of the winter, every time I smell a bonfire or hear a firework or see a bright star or a pink sunrise, or the wind blows the leaves around my ankles, I like to think of you and everything feels okay.