November

I hate October.  One of the best things about the move here has been the fact that October does not invade the coast the way it does the prairies.  Some winters it does not make it here at all, and I feel as though I have gotten away with something; many years since then I have gotten away without living through October.  Here on the coast we spend that season wrapped in a sodden pewter blanket of rain and cloud.  October sneaks up and disguises itself as crisp, cold morning sunlight.  Through the window it looks like the right month to go running outside.  Even through the car window, if you happen to have a garage, which I do.  It prevents October from seeping in through the seals.

But it catches you when you step out into the air, even if it's just to walk from the car into a building.  There are poplar leaves here, yellow, after all, and they have a smell that is amber and death.  The blades of grass stand up straight, each encrusted in its own capsule of frost.  And the sunlight is bright and blinding, but it's cold, it's so cold.  And in those seventeen steps toward the door you cannot help but inhale it, and it stings going in and it comes back out as a sob that has been trapped beneath the rib cage for years.  And then you take another breath that hurts less only because you expect it to hurt more.  And that is October.


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