November 2024
I almost don't know if it ever existed.
What came before, what came after;
something that began before it ended, something that ended before it began;
it was the first day of November 2025 and, for a moment, I swear, I swear I saw it again.
November 2024: There was a specific way in which you looked at me.
The days began to get shorter, as they do. We talk about a rhapsodic-style piece in a vaguely blue color. I hear tales of writing analyses within a 40-minute timespan. It seems only accurate that this is happening again now. (Except that rhapsody is far, far in the past, and I wonder if it still makes your heart hurt.)
For an entire November, I bury my head into the sand, yank it out again, throw myself back in. I reach for your hand and ruffle your hair more often than not. I spin fantasies out of indigo thread, slice my fingers open with silver ones. We look forwards to seeing each other at the end of every day. (Before the world split open, as it does.)
There are some things one only sees upon reflection in the future. I thought the look you would give me would last forever, but I only thought that and disproved it when it went away. And for a while afterwards, I didn't quite remember the feeling. After all, there was something about a small blanket in a bag, and after a while, the days grow longer and warmer and you'll no longer need a blanket anymore. After a while, a piano-playing mentor tells you that a cello-playing mentor is about to poison your light for a very, very long time. After a while, after you fly to LA and look off into what you now know as impossibility and foolishness with the water slipping over your feet, after time dies and is reborn and dies and is reborn, a feeling called November passes away.
After a while, I'll look back and see it.
After a while, November 1st will come around again, and I won't believe it, but this time I'll see it the instant that it happens. The lights are not the same, the place is not the same, but it could very well remind you of a feeling. The past is not the same, the hope is not the same, I'm swallowing my goodbyes so I don't say them too early, but for a moment I am warm and there is a glow in your hair and you look at me with a distantly familiar yet abundant love and, I guess, that's a feeling called November.