September

September saw him first and nearly missed. She wept tears of joy as she spread her curtains of white and gray to let in the light. She’d been preparing for weeks and would hold the anger from her brothers in the past to warm him until he gained his strength. Her frigid sisters to come would surely shun any weakness and she would not have it, because he was hers. A fog rolled in as she struggled to shut her eyes when the time came, for it seemed to her that something had been overlooked. Something infinitesimal that could take it all away. But her reluctance faded, and she rested well knowing that he’d finally arrived.

***

September whispered a song of comfort to dry his scuffed knee beneath the monkey bars in the sand. He’d fallen and knocked his wind for the first time, even after she’d blown in a sufficient heap of leaves from the softer trees to cushion things. She watched as he wiped a tear before it could drop. A child whose features resembled his own helped him to his feet. She continued her song and tousled his hair as he strolled with the other. A young woman squinting through wire-thin frames waved her flock back into the building. Her soft voice conceded to the ring of the bell.

***

September was gifted to witness his first kiss with the one from under the monkey bars. Some squirrels ducked for cover when she held her breath in anticipation just prior to the moment when the boy’s lips touched the other. She’d been a skosh temperamental in the preceding days. Some of the street drains in the boy’s neighborhood were overwhelmed as well as some branches that could not withstand the force of her exasperated sighs. After the peck of a kiss, she watched his circuitous sprint home, to avoid the puddles, in excitement and fright, for the other’s father, as he pulled into the drive, may have been gifted as well. He wasn’t of course, and she knew better. Instinctually she scattered pebbles and sticks to cover his tracks as she switched on the night light to guide his way.

***

September felt a sense of relief and showed it with warming rays upon him as he stood with a small group of faces that he’d never known before and chanted with them.

“I swear by Apollo, by Asclepius, by Hygeia, by Panacea…”.

She felt a rush of hope as knee-length smocks of white were placed upon each of their shoulders and they continued their oath.

“…I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone…”

After he’d shaken hands with each of his cohorts, she watched him approach the one that helped him up after his first fall and every time until then. They stood in the shade of an old tree beyond the parking lot, away from the crowd. He pulled a long box out of the inside pocket of his jacket and presented it with a smile. It was when he explained that the stethoscope belonged to his grandfather and that it could be used, in his absence, to hear the score of his existence, his reason, the reason that every man needs to survive, that she knew a bright future lay ahead, for she was unreservedly proud of what he’d already become.

***

September mustered the vapor in the air to hold him as deep moans shook his body from within. His cries struck her like the bolts of Zeus as he screamed into her. He’d arrived moments late on a weekend visit home to find his love beaten and pinned to the ground in residual indignation. A gift that even she’d helped the boys to hide had at last been received by the unkind hands of the other’s father whose son, in the name of family and honor and respect and all else that had been imprinted in his mind, could no longer justify walking the path they’d both walked for years. The skies grew dark in midday, for she was as helpless as he.

***

September rattled the windows and pelted them with the ice of her sisters when a wiser white smock told them what it was that she’d missed. A kidney stone had flipped a metastatic switch. The one from under the monkey bars dripped and left puddles for tracks as he entered the garish room on the seventh floor with the stethoscope in his hands. She watched as he stepped forward and placed it on her boy’s chest to hear his own score and reason. It no longer mattered who knew. She let up, slightly, knowing his love along with her own would get him through. It was obvious because he was strong, and he was hers.

***

September felt a rupture beneath her breasts when she couldn’t see him immediately upon opening her eyes. She roared into the ether and sent forth strikes that would last until her brother June, for she did not partake in the oaths of mortals before the Age of Pericles or beyond. Her reason was gone.