daylight savings

It never seems like the days actually get shorter gradually, so much as one day you find yourself going out at five o'clock and it's dark, and you realize it will be that way for a long time. The afternoons are short and the harsh angles of an autumn sun make everything look more ephemeral than the leaves ever could, which sometimes seem like they never actually go away.

I am reminded of a time in the summer--on the shortest night of the year, actually. It had been raining but the sun had just come out, but we went out to the park, she and I, and climbed trees and read to each other from our favorite books. The light seemed softer than it does now--the angles, and the temperature, and everything. It's a light that feels like it will last forever, as summer so often does.

But the summer faded and so did we, and I'm left here with it getting dark at five every night and no one to go home to, no one to climb trees with or to read to. And though they always tell me autumn's short, I've never really understood why. The dark and the cold and the rain are going to be here for months. We haven't even reached the longest night yet.