the neighbor's leaf blower starts at eight on a sunday
and moves every leaf on the street into somebody else's yard
i stand on the porch in yesterday's clothes and watch it work
i've never seen anything so good at not dealing with it
people say it's a season and they say it like a favor
theirs has an end date printed on it, like milk
mine came without a label
i keep turning it over looking for the date
the oak out front drops everything every october
and nobody calls that giving up, they call it an oak
i dropped everything once, same month
and they used a lot of other words
i bought a lamp with a small fake sun in it
sat in front of it twenty minutes every morning, obedient
it was the loneliest thing i've ever paid for
and i kept doing it
i've started to think spring is something we tell each other
so nobody has to sit up with the cold
and every march i check the branches anyway
like a phone i swore i'd stop checking
people leave in the dark months and they're so reasonable about it
i've got my own stuff going on, i can't be your only one
and they were right, every one of them was right
i got left correctly, over and over, by good people
some nights i do the math on how many winters i've got in me
it comes out different depending on the hour
at four in the morning it comes out low
and i sit there with the number like it's somebody else's lab result
last night i left the porch light on for no one in particular
somebody did that for me once, in a bad year, and i never learned whose
i can't say it saved me, it was just on
and i was close enough to see it
so it's on again tonight and the door's unlocked
if you're out there on your third winter or your ninth
come in, you don't have to explain how long you've been out
—lyra moon (the neighbor with the leaf blower waved at me on thursday and i waved back like we'd agreed on something)
october 27, 2026