Outlasting Autumn

The leaves were already browned when I whispered my goodbyes. A uniform and a small square of paper labeled by the Selective Service and signed in the precious, curling cursive of my lover. I inhaled the strong scent of earth and tobacco in his strong embrace and exhaled to the emptiness of my own arms. Grasping at the air to find that I felt nothing else at all. I closed the brand new, wooden door and drifted towards the window. And as I stood in the midst of my most bitter parting in this world, I could never tell whether the numbness I felt at my core was from the brusque, autumn chill, or the culmination of my settling senses of unsolicited solitude. And like crumbling leaves turned to chaff beneath the weathering gale, the sunset upon my own unrest for dozens of sleepless nights. Clutching a rigid pillow so that perhaps in my dreams, I could imagine him beside me once again. 

The nipping cold turned bolder, as the seasons begrudgingly shifted. The feelings of this despairing winter matched my internal sentiments entirely. Hours of daylight shortened, diminishing as rapidly as the natural scent of mint and tobacco. His scent. I burned tobacco in the hearth and scattered the leaves throughout the house to no avail. Somehow, the components were too lackluster to equate the whole. I wishfully devoted my wandering hours in the too-cold home to writing letters. Spritzing the envelope with my perfume, and willing it to travel across the sea where my heart was stationed. I spent more perfume on that stationary than I ever did on myself. And a response from him kept me warmer than the fireplace. I recited each word over and over until every stroke of his hand was memorized by rote. The letters shielded me from the cold and the ghosts born of the silence. And on the nights shrouded in the most consuming darkness, I found my light in the pieces of him he mailed back to me. An equivalent exchange of our hearts. And when there was no one to sing offkey holiday melodies and no one to laugh through the night, I placed my husband’s letters beneath my pillow each night, knowing his thoughts were with me.

And in a small eternity, the winter ice melted into the sounds of spring birds chirping. Blankets of white were replaced by fields of green. And vines returned to life around the house, birthing flowers small and fragile as a butterfly’s wing. And I smiled in the red hues of roses we had planted not so long ago. Roses were my favorite. If I were to be reborn, I should like to be a red rose. Not just for the romance, but for the vibrance they brought. My grandest smiles these days came from relishing in auras of my roses. It was a true fondness, and joy- a balm to my soul. My favorite scent and my favorite tea. And the comfort of a soft touch so tentative as the brush of a rose petal. 

In spring, I relished in the newfound joys of the cedar cabinet. An armoire filled with old clothes, knick-knacks, and mementos. The memory of him woven into the threads of every scrap of clothing. I ran my fingers over my stitchwork, places where I’d tried my best to counteract proof of the trials and pleasures of a life well-lived. Small tears in seams and patches concealing holes. Using a needle and a silken thread to mend the broken bonds of what once was. But in truth, everything had its time. I ran my hand across the lengths of vaguely scented fabric and asked myself if his clothes needed any mending. Wherever he was now. I hoped he was well fed and clothed. 

He had never been adept with such “troublesome” tasks. Every time I fixed one of his silly mistakes, he’d lift me from the ground and spin me around. I was weightless. I liked to believe that was what flying felt like. I wished to fly again. I climbed atop the bed and bounced my feet against the metal coils hidden beneath the layer of cotton. It was deceptive, really. That a contraption meant to induce peaceful slumber was so mechanical. I jumped as high as I could. Awaiting each fall as if I were swinging in his arms. Around the twelfth jump, I lost myself in the memory and slipped. 

The bruise on my hip blossomed a miraculous shade of purple and red. It hurt, but for some reason I could only laugh through my tears. Spring really did bring all kinds of strange flowers, my bruise was no different. And just as I fell onto the bowing springs of the mattress, spring fell into the arms of summer. It was a friendly greeting, each had awaited the other in sanguine patience.

And in their reunion, the warmth that crept out of hibernation in spring exploded at full strength for summer. I dried herbs and gardened and continued writing letters. Slipping a few ground leaves to remind him of home. My thoughts escaped me more often than not these days. And in each slip from reality, I became attuned with the emotional tenderness of a sensual summer night. I changed letters into poems reflecting my own mental dalliances. And I hummed my small happiness to myself in a muted song. Thinking that if we could meet in such a memory, I would send such things one-thousand times over. 

It was mid-summer when the responses tapered out. I felt as if I was standing beneath a water spout that no longer flowed freely. I was stricken with thirst, and every drop I had counted. Only my minor hopes and understandings retained my will to continue sending the letters. I waited and waited and waited. But in each unanswered sentence, I unwillingly relinquished a fractal of hope. 

If each fractal equated a star, I would be looking into a night sky speckled in the smattered shards of my soul. It was an aching sort of prayer, a wish that we’d be looking into the same night sky each evening. Or seeing the same sun at every sunrise and sunset. At least that much should be constant across the vastness of the ocean. So that’s where I went. 

I slipped fragments and splinters of my life into thick, green glass bottles corked by porous mediums that smelled of oil. In the bottle, everything looked so distorted. Like it wasn’t even really there. It was a strange sort of magic. There were poems, scraps of fabric, flowers, buttons, and spices. All wrangled into bottles and set adrift in the water. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that if I were to send more tangible bits of myself over piece by piece, perhaps it wouldn’t feel like I was waiting aimlessly. Like I was a listless ghost trapped in a snowglobe of life too far gone to reach across the world. I reeled my arm back and threw each bottle further and further than the last. In each arcing throw, I pictured a falling star. I imagined the bottle glinting, sparkling like a shooting star, as it soared across the distant waters. I muttered each wish to myself upon the bottle-shaped stars. For very few was the number of things so pure as wishes made upon stars. If I made my own, maybe, just maybe, my words would be caught within the lips of night, swallowed and made real by the universe.

Be safe. My heart swelled. Come home. I wished. Come home to me, safely. I threw another bottle and wished once more. I wished and wished and wished until I was out of bottles. And I switched my efforts into stones. Placing the love induced weight of both a kiss and a wish before sending it as far as I could into the horizon. The summer days were long, but night came eventually. As did the soreness in my shoulders and the permanent taste of salt and sea upon my lips. 

I spent most of summer by the ocean. So much so that I began to cough the same way the waves did when they frothed upon striking the sand. The stinging linger of salt in my lungs reminded me of the precious nature of each breath. And when autumn came, my chest burned like the candle I left alight by the window. Fading mirages danced themselves up the cobblestones at the entrance as rain fell and went. And I could only tell the rain had left once the ravens came to observe the wet soil.

The scent of earth was strong. It hurt so badly to take it in, but I smiled at the connections I felt to days long gone. The cough only grew stronger, and slowly, it became phlegm. My knees pained far too much to go to the beach anymore. And the veins in my body had become varicose. Colored like the bruise I’d given myself so many years ago. And somehow, my love seemed just a bit closer with every day. Perhaps that came with age.

At one point, I couldn’t count how many years passed in the same way. Where I followed the same patterns at all times. But seasons lost their importance and calendars melded into my memory. Months and days and minutes could all be approximated just by a glance at the sky and the feeling in my bones. I lived among nature now. Eyes always upon the ocean that lived not so far away. Eyes always on the horizon. Waiting for the news I would receive soon enough. Time was just a relative concept anyway. I had nothing to lose.

Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. A cycle of four where each season grows and lives a life only to fade gracefully into the next. Now, such meetings between seasons made me feel sorrowful in a morosely elated manner. As time carried on, I wonder when it was that they all became parts of one singular, beautiful thing. Each season had a lifespan. But did they know that they would come back in the next year? They accepted death with admirable serenity. It was a somber acknowledgment I made to each day that passed now, whether it be laced with falling snow or adorned in green vines. And perhaps that came with age too.

And finally, there was a knock upon an old, wooden door. And then a second knock and a third. But no one came to the door. The house was empty.

“Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” A young female voice rang like the tittering of bells over the reverberating sounds of the man’s knocking. He turned to face her.

“Might you be the Mrs. James Lawrence that lives in this house, ma’am?” His voice was firm. He was outfitted in a uniform- neat and freshly pressed. 

“No, sir. But this is her house.” 

“Do you know where she is, ma’am?” The woman simply nodded and motioned for him to follow her up a steep hill. The scent of roses was strong. The roses as well as the garden had grown out of control in the past years. She stepped with caution. The man traveling close behind. On top of the hill sat a large, white cross. It stood regally, overlooking the oceanfront. 

“Mrs. Lawrence died years ago. Exactly a year after her husband was drafted, actually. It was quite terrible. She had been so optimistic, too. I don’t know how it happened.” The soldier nodded with a soundless, solemn understanding. He pulled a yellow slip from the pocket of his jacket.

“Perhaps it was meant to be then. Mr. Lawrence was killed in combat around the same time. Delays in the office have extended the period in which we meant to inform her of the news.” The woman inhaled a gentle gasp before eyeing the white cross.

“You know, the people around here mention her quite a bit. They say that she waits here. Waits right on this hill before the ocean. Just waiting for him to come home.” She smiled unto the earth. Remembering the jovial woman and her endless oddities always balanced out with an equal love for her husband. “I think she may finally find peace with this.” The soldier paused a moment before clearing his throat. His voice was deep, and sounded as if it was burdened with the tribulations of many more lifetimes than he had lived. 

“Do you believe in God, ma’am?” 

“I do.” Her response was nearly instantaneous. 

“I’d think living and waiting under the melancholy strain of memories is much worse than dying. I’d like to believe they’re together right now in heaven.” The woman was silent for a moment. Mulling over the thought in her head. The soldier had said that Mr. Lawrence had died around the same time Mrs. Lawrence had. Would it be wishful thinking to presume that some thread of fate between them had linked such a fateful connection? She didn’t know the truth of it all, but wishful thinking was all she could muster. And wishful thinking was just hoping, and holding onto a little hope wasn’t all that difficult for a pair like this.

“Yes. I’d like to believe that too.” 

The man in uniform kneeled before the cross and placed the yellow note at the foot of the gravestone. The scent of roses and mint and earth mingled in the wind. And the wait was over.

Aliza Thomas