Oh, October

There is a road that opens

when the leaves begin to fall,

past the last familiar house,

past the answering machines

and the names you no longer call.

The pavement turns to gravel there,

the map forgets your name,

and the trees lean close to whisper things

the summer never came to say.

Welcome to October.

The rain hangs in the air

like a thought you cannot finish,

and every fence wears silver beads

where the afternoon diminishes.

Wet leaves cling to the pavement,

porch lights bloom before the night,

smoke curls from distant chimneys

like ghosts returning home to plight.

Somewhere, a screen door slams.

Somewhere, a dog barks twice.

Somewhere, a mother calls her children in.

The evening smells of woodsmoke and spice,

of cinnamon, ash and something sacrificed.

There is a bakery on the corner

with its windows dressed in steam,

where a woman kneads the darkness

into something soft as dreams.

There is a churchyard further down,

where the headstones wear the moss,

and the wind moves through the cedar trees

like a prayer for what we've lost.

Keep walking.

Past the garden of dead sunflowers,

past the mailbox bent with rust,

past the house that wasn't there last year,

with its windows full of dust.

Its chimney breathes though no wood burns.

Its curtains shift though no one stirs.

And something in you knows this place,

though you have never walked in the space.

You will want to knock.

Don't.

Some doors open into yesterday,

and yesterday is a country

that will gladly let you enter

but may never let you leave.

Instead, follow the narrow path

where the map gives up its claim,

through a forest full of copper leaves

that fall like forgotten names.

The branches creak. The owls wake.

Every step sounds like a small mistake

you have finally forgiven yourself for.

At the bottom lies a lake,

black glass beneath a bruised-blue sky.

Across the water, a bonfire burns.

You hear laughter in the trees.

You smell the wool of childhood clothes.

Someone is saving you a place.

Someone has kept the fire.

Someone remembers who you were

before the world required you

to grow a little harder,

a little more accustomed to goodbye

than to asking people not to go away.

Sit here awhile.

October will not ask you to be happy.

It will not ask you to explain

the birthdays you remember,

the faces that remain,

or why a certain song can make

a stranger's kitchen feel like home.

It will not ask you to stop missing

what the years have taken away.

It will only let the fire burn

until the darkness turns to grey.

And when you rise to leave,

the path will disappear behind you.

The lake will swallow up the stars.

The cold will find its way through.

But tucked inside your coat pocket,

beneath the ache, beneath the blue,

you will find a single copper leaf

that proves October happened to you.

That you stood somewhere between

what was lost and what might be,

where the past was just a whisper

and the future, just a tree.

And you will understand, at last,

why some places feel like home

even when they're made of things

you can never keep or own.

When November comes to find you,

when the last warm light grows thin,

there will always be a road somewhere

that lets October in.

You need only find the gravel.

You need only follow through.

The leaves will know your footsteps.

October will remember you.