@misocore 's entry for fall fiesta - poem ▌ WHERE FALL ENDS ͙͙͙͙͙͙͙✙़ As I watch you walk away into the frost, I count the warmer months— the easy seasons when you chose to stay. Back when staying took no effort at all. Now the maple trees bleed out across the pavement. Porches swell with orange, and my eyes stay wide, stung raw and heavy from the quiet wreck of it all. You didn't just leave; you stripped the room clean before you went. Autumn arrives like a blade. The air doesn't just touch my skin— it fills my lungs with glass, forcing me to breathe in everything I lost. I am completely numb, yet somehow every nerve is screaming. On the corner, couples press their coats together, laughing. I move past them like a shadow through a parade, invisible against the Halloween crowd. Sticky candy wrappers tumble down the gutter— bright, hollow trash, reminding me of every soft thing you used to say. The neighborhood kids shout "Trick or Treat!" into the dusk, and the joke lands heavy in my throat: you were never a gift. You were only a parlor trick. I still hear the tremor in my own voice, trying to anchor "I love you" into a rising gale just before the line snapped. We didn't just drift. We rotted in October. Now the sweet decay of crushed pumpkins hangs in the damp air, sour and turning to ash. And that is why I turn my back on autumn— because it promises a harvest, and leaves me with the dead.
