Look at you. Sitting there under lavender sheets. Naked, staring out the window. Leaning against that pillow you call a husband. Buck up—you’ve got a life ahead of you! It’s decision time! Sweat it out, press a yellow rose petal on your cheek and pretend it’s a tear. Commemorate the life you could have lived if the end of August were forever—
But it’s always this way during the last week of August. I remember sycamore leaves like fallen hands, husks of curled bark, flashes of sun on tombstones, my bike whirring onto Eighth Avenue, how a breeze wafted the smell of coriander, pork and beer, and sea salt floated in from the harbor. The end of summer but the light already had autumn’s oblique glare…
Always with the melancholy. Think of it as one more hurrah before you begin this year’s harvest, before you enter your favorite season of mists and yellow fruitfulness and—
The ship of death? Remember when we were twenty-three? Beginning a very good year? Planning an escape from a routine which had yet to begin. Midwinter’s so far away…
Here before you—
April is cruel, October gentle, August melancholy. A time for longing, thinking about what could have been, the deep journey to oblivion…
A last chance to—
Swallows drift at sunset—or are they bats?—swathes of cloud hang in neon-pink sky. Hope and resignation both—weeks until the first frost…My youth was wasted on my youth. It’s been seven years since that August day in the cemetery…
You’ve entered another phase of life. You’re not old, just older. Trust me, when February comes as a relief, you’ll long for this sun, the drawn-out dusks, your swathes of—
Will there be any more sentimental education after the August of my life? Or am I better off rolling a cigarette and turning on his heel…September shall not be undone, I will be aswirl in that great whirligig of time on the death ship before I see the rose pink of a soul reborn. Through this gloaming comes a mourning dove’s call…
Look, I know you’ve never been much of a sentimentalist. Let’s have a draught of—vermouth all right? Yes yes, you’re a Campari guy. No gin, sorry. Just a bit to take the edge off. You wait, by mid-September, by the 17thh, you’ll be—I know, it can still get hot, global warming, Indian summers, Virgos rising—
Morgan’s a Virgo—Queen of Pentacles. She likes to make up her garden, enjoy the comfort of friends. Always invests in back to school shoes. Remember when we sat like chess pieces in stalemate, not wanting or needing to move? Seashells of light over the turquoise lake from that jet ski roaring like a bear. Ospreys float low, pretending to be seabirds. A lone fir like an index finger. We were on a fallen trunk either very old or recently sodden, which crumbled if pressed, broke into crumbs of time. The lake so low from the drought those stones go blind in the sun. Another few years and they’ll sharpen into glass…
You turned to see if she would, but if she did you didn’t see her. You always do that and no one ever turns back. Except your mother—
Mom always took us to the pool at this time of year. But by the time we returned home, by twilight, I was full of this end of August feeling, but it was still too early to sleep and nothing was on TV; tired of TV, I wanted it to be dark, wanted to skip sleep for the morning and new. So that by the time school starts it’s a relief, though no child would admit it…
Nigredo, albedo, rubedo. What about the yellowing, citrinitas? The wise old man—
I’m eager to empty the trash bin of my mind, so I can move on to newer and better…
Fine. Just cry it out.
Okay. I’ll feel better after I lie facedown on the rug. Then I’ll blow my nose, study myself in the mirror, the burst blood vessels around my eyes, tiny bruises, like mitochondria swimming in cytoplasm…
You gotta wait, patience is a—