September. It exists beyond thirty days; to the depths of hours not kept by ticking clocks and straight-edged sundials. It’s a season of it’s own design, where Summer and Autumn forget their opposition and embrace in a tryst of indifference to the laws of seasonal nature. Greens are lush in shades of grass, vines, and thorns. August blooms of crown and divine, the broad leaves of sycamores, stalks in repetitive wave, secret a slow gilding and bronzed glow. Cicadas accept the allowance of later mornings, taking up their measured percussive rhythms as moonflowers curl within their evanescence. The earth from which they resurrected, no longer weighted by the scent of force and toil, mineral rich and sun baked; now a hover of cooling subterranean decomposition and sporadic leaf litter decay that rolls down the line of gutters. In September, the sun’s a brilliance of gold tones, the sky a blue of honesty in waning humidity. Trees in silhouette raise whispered vespers in breezes that elicit gooseflesh to run the neck, shoulders, spine; awakening an urge in the core of my being. The evening sky, in flame of mythical fires, reflects parallels between mortals, Gods, and the Cosmos; who were we when our flesh was worn inside out? Doppelgängers of self masquerade in moon ascending moths, broad-winged and enamored lunatics, the patient eight-legged hunters, weavers of homicidal perspectives, the salivating canines of unidentifiable cryptids lurking in underbrush, the shadow of steps, ditches, desperate to sink their hunger into heels, stunning and stealing away with their victims. September dark of night, vibrations of atmospheric seams disentangle, pin pricked portals to imagination flare and reflect haunted tales of sacrifice; rising smoke and sparks. Sleep steals me momentarily, the skeletal hand of the Autumn Man, tempted by soft flesh and clove breath, caresses the freckled tan of my bared clavicle, stirring me, his desire lingering at my ear, imploring for a taste of my immortality.

E.A. O'Connell. September 2019