this season around

It’s been too long, but not because nothing has happened. No. This summer was the brightest and the bluest and how do you write always sunshine and the longest days turning into longer nights and the hazy happy blur they all became? This summer was also one of Toronto’s hottest on records so I floated through it, above and beyond the heat. But that heat was strong and in that heat I slipped away. Last week I saw myself from a distance and I felt distant from that girl I saw. Somehow in that heat I’d forgotten myself. But yesterday, a text from an old friend suddenly so far away came. He said fall had been feeling heavy but my words made it feel lighter. And then I walked home alone in the cold and the crisp and the dark and everything seemed to right itself. Fall signals the onset of winter and all sorts of endings, but yesterday, during that walk home, everything felt like the beginning and possible. I remembered the me that came before the heat and I realized how much I’d missed her. I want longer days and the longest nights, and I refuse to float above them this season around. Pass me a hat and scarf and I will be that girl I used to be.