every fall

I thought of you today. I saw you in the colors of my world. It’s been a complicated season. The one that reminds me of you. The ache of losing you came back as I smell the end of summer. Colors shift. Trees transition. Rain pours. And I lose you. Every fall. The abandonment is woven into the environment and it stings. I walk out of my house and can feel your absence. Mama. Why did you leave me? How did you decide to fall like the leaves? You left with the season and my sorrow carries on every year. Every summer. So nostalgic and triggering. I wish I knew the Inupiaq word for this feeling. This emptiness and fear attached to the natural seasonal shift. Depression is heavy; dissociation is deep; but the love will heal. And maybe, someday, I’ll forgive the fall.