seasons

Three a.m. found me outside, talking quietly into a cell phone while the cicadas traded stories with the crickets about the end of summer. Beneath me, the concrete gathered chill from the still, silent air, as clouds played peekaboo with a gibbous moon.

November. Just as I’ve celebrated the putting-away of shorts and other warm-weather clothing, along comes a day with a high of seventy-eight. The sweaters will have to live one more day in the back of the closet.

October may still be my favorite month, but November runs a close second. Every year, as the leaves on the maples and the oaks begin their transition from green to technicolor, I mark a birthday and restart my mental calendar. October is a month of change. Of promise. November is a promise fulfilled; leaves radiant and fluttering, like so many sequins, before cascading down on vehicle and roadway like the snow that never seems to come south to Alabama.

Jeff says I’ve been laughing in my sleep lately. Neither of us know why. The sleeper cannot tell tales that even she does not remember from her dreams.