I need you so much closer

Tonight, I drove home from work as the sun went down. The light, blue from sunset, was perfect, and I noticed the leaves--which were just bright yellow, the same which I wanted to photograph but never did--had fallen off, leaving tree limb and shoulder bare. Now the leaves rest in gutters and a strip sleeps down the middle of wide, tree-lined streets. My favorite part of fall.

Did I ever write about my dog, Patches? I remember what felt so fresh and painful as winter after we put her to sleep, though it was the end of May. I remember it feeling so important that I grieved at the time, didn't hold it in. Sometimes when I was that young--19--often, actually, I felt I was broken and there were a lot of things wrong with me. Somehow, one of the things I took away from Patches was that I was, am, a whole person. The autumn which followed was one of the happiest I can remember, and the spring after, I began dating my housband.


I suppose, sometimes, things dying, seasons changing, is healing, even when I dread the change. I suppose I'm enjoying this autumn more than I thought I would.

I restarted the song Transatlantacism over and over, feeling all the world that I was 19 again and bills, worries, taxes, and the world went away, if only for just a minute, and the only real important thing is that guy's letter he just sent from Honduras, written in his handwriting, with pictures of him in front of the ocean, by a statue, in a new country, and maybe, privately, thinking I need you so much closer, and then smiling because it's kind of, maybe, true.

Tonight, that's what fall felt like.


I opened my front door, and that guy, the one who sent me pictures (for whatever reason, we were just friends then, after all) sitting on my couch.

I love that song.