Oh, autumn, you are enchanting.
With your bright orange colors and crisp, cool days. Sun shining through the auburn trees. You are something of a story book.
If I could capture your essence and put it in a snow globe, I’d find a way to squish myself inside and live within it forever.
But your golden country roads are lies, the pumpkin spice smell in the streets are falsehoods. You bring an ugly thing as this world and wrap it in the bow of joy. But, autumn, you are only the bow; a façade–something this world wishes it was.
You fool me with your songbirds and with your beautifully ripened pumpkin patches. You fool me with your sense of old falling away and new beginnings emerging. You trick me into believing that you are a season of love; of warmth; of fire in the hearth; the season of cuddling under a blanket on the couch with warm cocoa. You are full of dreams. Only dreams.
That is all you are, dear beautiful autumn, all you are is sugar in bitter tea; the taste of molasses in ashwaghanda. Sweet for a moment, but oh so short lived and passing on, just as every other season.
You pack the air with joy and mirth, you fill the sky with song. You turn these leaves of earthen trees into joyous, celebratory color!
Celebratory why? Celebrations of what do you gather these decorations for?
Do you not see that those in your streets still cry and struggle and only scrape by? Do you not see that your laughter and harmony are only soundtracks you play to drown out the noise of sorrow? Wonderfully blushing maple leaves and golden sunsets and cider, hay rides and bonfires do not fix the state of the orphans and of the abused. It does not save the financially distressed nor the family feud. It does not birth love or promise flannel throws. You are only rose-colored glasses in a world soaked in the vodka of pain.
We are drunken by you, oh autumn, we are drunken fools. Dreams laced with cider, cider laced with vodka. We sip on that liquid in your tinted glass that seems so sweetly rosy, but it bites just as winter does. And now we all stumble about, our eyes insane with dreams of joy and hallucinations of happiness and love, forevers of mirth. But when we awaken again, we are stripped of all this and our dignity. We lie naked of your trances and empty of your promises. Once you remove this lens from the air, all we see is sullen streets and sunken faces and grey clouds and smog.
You are a lie, beautiful fall, a taunting lie. Surely we fall in your presence. We fall down to the bitterness of winter, blanketed in icy cold; the unthawed hearts, we freeze to death. For this is your poison, Autumn, you are our fall dressed in kindly colors.
Popp!nTalk 