Welcome, Autumn.

Last night, I left the Cafe I work at in a hurry. Completely ready to escape the pace and the heat of it all, I stepped out into a dark relief, free from artificial lights and any thought but my own. The air out wasn't quite cold, it was brisk. It was a sharp breeze that could cut through any sweater, yet leave a gentle coolness across the skin, forcing one to feel the wholeness that is the body, that is identity. I began to walk to my car when the dulcet sounds of a church bell began to fill the empty space in the sky. Familiarity was felt, for who has yet to hear the ringing of a church bell through a slightly bitter night? I stood still in the street, considering the perfectness of solitude with in an overpopulated world, and I breathed it in deeply. A cold, slightly rainy bit of air encompassed me. I was not warm, yet understandably, fully alive. I inhaled memories, good memories of seasons passed; yoga in front of my open dorm window last October, the pulse of a cold hand I held in a love two years sour, the white, nit sweater my Grandma gave me and I wore every winter day of my eighth grade year, a steaming shower after a particularly long snow day, coming home to my mother's toothy smile and banana bread, hugging my Great Grandmother on her porch that last Thanksgiving, long and senseless drives with my brother and our favorite album. I inhaled every song and every meaningful vignette painted with lovely, solid people. I let go of negativity created by me and pointed at others. I inhaled good. I inhaled me.