Secrets of the Windy Night

A draft causes a door to click shut, and another to open. I hear the leaves of the mulberry flutter and know they flash with moonlight. Dried leaves are skittering and the first acorns of the season clattering on the roof. A wind-moved branch scrapes the rain gutter, emitting a metallic groan. I watch the drapes billow into the room. Although the night air is warm, it chills me. An emptiness ages old seizes my mind, and I think the hollow space within the bellying cloth the void itself, making its presence, or absence, known. There are moments when I feel as though I could enter there and absorb it into myself. All nothingness in my grip, I could blow out the cinder of what has seemed real, and become dark serenity. But the stubborn drape resists my hand. I continue to believe them both solid objects. The shape collapses into the falling silence. My hand I use to scratch what I think to be an itch.

Sadly

The instability of seasonal change has set in. For the moment, we are back to summery heat. A few days might bring autumnal chill. Thus far, we have had no winter cold. It is a time of mixed feelings. I am pleased that the hot season is almost gone, but do not look forward to the winter. Fall is pleasant, but always makes me a bit sad. The receding sun, the shortened days, the passing of a year's green leaves, are all too much loss for me. This year will be worse than usual, I think. There is too much in my life which is unlikely to see another spring. I don't deal well with partings. After seventeen years in this place, I still miss my old home, and the things here which have provided some distraction from that old sadness grow frail, even as the things I have always disliked about this place grow more intense. I cannot return, and will soon lose the desire to remain, and lack any place to go. Thus, the withering leaves and dying flowers are now more difficult to endure, and those of my waking thoughts which are not troubled turn ever more to aimless memory, or to sleep.