mostly nonsense

CCXXV.

The pressure of summer disappears and leaves autumn in its place. It’s just a tease, you know that. Tomorrow will return the waves of heat that leave rings of sweat on necklines and coffee tables. Tomorrow you will wake to the familiar combination of the hum of an air conditioner and the buzz of your alarm and the murmurs of people much smarter than you on the television, and you will eat three handfuls of dry cereal on the bus to work while watching the sun bleed scarlet on the still-asleep buildings. Not today.

Today the breeze lifts leaves right off of their branches, and the fabric of your sweater settles softly against your skin, a cable-knit barrier against the cool air.

When you were a kid, you loved the idea of a book and a cup of tea, curling up on a couch or sprawling on a sun porch, but you could never get comfortable for more than a few minutes, could never figure out where to put the mug, and it turned out you didn’t like tea all that much, anyway, the same way you didn’t yet like mushrooms or C-SPAN or the idea of getting anything less than you’d dreamed of.

There are so many reasons that that kid would be disappointed, would shake her head and walk away, would promise never to become the you that you turned out to be, but in this instant, sliding from the hard plastic desk chair to the perfect square of sunlight in front of the open window, breeze rolling in, cup of tea in hand, and a stack of books up to your knee,

you think maybe that kid would understand.