friendship

Our friendship developed slowly over our career in the academy; I think we'd known each other for a year before we even had a conversation where it was just the two of us. (She even commented, I think, with a rare wryness to her tone, "Have we really known each other for so long and we've never been alone in the same room together?") It wasn't that we didn't like each other, but the opportunity never arose for more than an odd conversation here and there. She was comforting, a little oasis of stability amidst the mercurial moods of the rest of us, and I came to treasure those moments we spent together.

I think she's the reason I was able to start seeing the cracks between us, the way everyone leaned on her for support, the way she would always offer that warm smile, and listen, and offer advice or consolation as we needed it. And when one day we were alone--we had taken to practicing fencing together--and I finally asked if she was all right, she finally told me no.

She'd gotten too close to the chaos that was the rest of us, I think. She'd become entangled. All she could tell me is she was overwhelmed, that she felt pulled in so many different directions, that she was exhausted--I don't think she understood yet that what she needed most was to leave. So I did what any friend would do, and I planted those seeds, and tended those little shoots of doubt, so that one day she could finally be free of us.

longing

We have learned enough ways to love.

It should have been easy, walking away. We'd spent so much time so close to each other that we'd get pricked by each other's thorns, which, if we weren't careful, would catch and tear and draw blood--and that had been going on for more years than I could count. We gave each other such exquisite scars, and in our lowest moments we knew better than anyone how to comfort each other--there is no greater intimacy than seeing someone who is gravely wounded.

So, full of righteous fury, I left. And though I will tell you until my dying day that I was right to do so, I also began to feel, when the sun had set and I had no company but my thoughts and the cold and the snow, an intense emptiness. Because it wasn't all barbs and thorns, was it? Didn't we sharpen each other, make each other stronger? And I imagined just what she would say, to comfort, to injure--in the end I'm not sure either of us could have even told the difference.

I could have put so many miles between us. Instead I lingered just out of her reach--which, yes, was dwindling by the day--and reveled as rumor of each new setback reached my ears, and longed to be at her side to say the words that would heal her each time I learned that someone else had finally deserted her. And no matter what happened, whether I found solace in the company of some fellow deserter or spent my days alone, I felt just as alone as I know she must have.

It would have overwhelmed me eventually. I pictured that moment so vividly I sometimes thought it was real: the smug look on her face as she mocked me for crawling back, the exact cutting words I would say in return. And, much later, her head on my shoulder as we whispered comforting lies to each other, as though being so close could end in anything but disaster.

Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different if I'd been strong enough to leave, or strong enough to stay.

a prelude for october

I don't think I can recall an October that has started out this warm and this dry. There have been sunny Octobers, of course, but we are now in the darker half of the year, where the sun is weakening and the days getting shorter, and the idea of an October day that threatens to hit eighty degrees is almost absurd. Yet here we are. The leaves are turning and for the most part the nights are getting chilly, but there is still no rain in sight and there is still smoke and sun and warmth to be had. It's uncanny.

The leaves are starting to turn in earnest now; it was a strange summer, and I wonder how that will affect them. Warmer summers tend to lead to more vibrant colors, if memory serves; so what does an odd summer like this one, which started out cool and then just never quite ended, mean?

It's so tempting to try to read patterns and meaning into the weather. We want to be able to see the stripes on a caterpillar and know whether the winter will be mild; we want to feel in tune with the seasons, as if they are something we can ever really understand, as if we can divine some deeper truth when October is too warm or when the snow never stops falling one winter.

The past several Octobers (with the exception of October of 2020) I've tried to write something every day, or most days, based on some one-word prompts. I will endeavor to do so again this year, so, as the kids say, watch this space.