He thought of the poets and smiled. They had it backwards. Autumn wasn’t the death of the year.
And for the first time in twelve years, he slept without dreaming of loss. autumn falls round and robust
Then, around the second week of September, the rain came. Not a drizzle—a robust, rolling thunderstorm that lasted three days. The kind of rain that makes the gutters sing and the frogs go mad with joy. He thought of the poets and smiled
On the last night of October, after the last guest had gone home and the last leaf had let go, Elias sat on his porch. The moon was a perfect, heavy circle. The fields were bare now, the pumpkins carved into grinning skulls, the apples reduced to cores in a compost heap. And for the first time in twelve years,
Even the weeds had gone robust. Goldenrod towered over his head, thick as broomsticks. Asters burst into purple galaxies along the fence line. The air itself felt heavy —not with decay, but with ripeness. It smelled of wet earth, apple rot (the good kind, the kind that promised cider), and the sweet, peppery breath of falling leaves.