October, Anyway

October arrives in San Diego
without knocking.

It comes barefoot,
in eighty-degree weather,
with the windows open
and the sun still lingering
long past when it should.

There are no forests turning gold here.
No frost silvering the grass.
The palm trees do not know
they are supposed to let go.

The ocean keeps its summer blue.

And still—

October is here.

You can enter it
at sunset,
when the light turns honey-colored
against the apartment walls
and for a few minutes
everything looks like it belongs
to another season.

You can enter it
on a quiet beach
after the tourists have gone,
when the water darkens
and the sky becomes enormous,
and somewhere behind you
someone is lighting a candle
though the night is still warm.

You can enter it
through the smell of coffee
on an early morning,
through a sweatshirt worn
mostly for the feeling of it,
through the first song
you haven't heard since last year.

October is not always
a red leaf falling from a tree.

Sometimes it is realizing
that another year
has quietly become autumn
without you noticing.

Sometimes it is standing
under a palm tree
and feeling nostalgic
for a season
you never actually had.

Sometimes it is the strange ache
of knowing you are changing
while everything around you
looks exactly the same.

Here, October does not ask
the world to become colder.

It simply lowers the sun.

It makes the evenings softer.
It makes you look backward.
It reminds you that endings
do not have to be dramatic.

You can be surrounded by summer
and still be becoming someone new.

So come in.

Leave the ocean at your back.
Bring the warm air with you.

The door is open.

It is October.
Even here.