October

Dear October,
All year, I long for your low afternoon suns, your whispering leaves, promises of sipping coffee with a light plaid blanket, and introspective nighttime fires.

This year I’ve missed all of that because I woke up early in October to a deep heartbreak and lost and buried my dad. Through the years, October, you’ve taught me how to embrace change with a fierceness that only losing pieces of one’s heart and dreams can teach. At times, it has felt like trying to hold onto my life high up in the branches of my favorite Hickory tree and one by one slowly watching a hope or a dream break off and drift down away from my grasp.

Even so October, your fallen leaves remind me that we must often let go of ourselves and the things and people who decorate our branches in life. Your colors – vibrant yet muted – color my days with beauty that make me want to run freely one day and pierce me to my knees the next.

Because of you, October, I see the road before me differently but more clearly. It’s often enticing and beautiful then sometimes wet, crunchy and desolate. In your days, you’ve seen my heart shatter twice, and I want to scream at you.

But you bring me peace, October.

You take my breath away each year. And your bold lessons remind me that though winter is coming with its gray, cold, and dormant days, new leaves will soon bloom, and their canopies will shelter and hold my heart again soon.