fall

happened really quick this year. maybe it's because i spent most of my time indoors, reading, studying, watching television. cause yesterday i just hopped into my car to drive down to the best buy and all the trees were glossed over with rain water that had been pouring down all afternoon and the leaves of the trees were just so... not perfectly green. so in front of the unsettling, homogenous backdrop of a light gray and diminishing afternoon--but behind the cars and the slicked down roads and the fog building up on the inside of my windshield--there were oranges and reds and mauve-tinged, dying greens catching my rambling thoughts and forcing me to come to the realization that another summer was over and that the next one would be the last i'd ever have. i didn't like the feeling because it felt like i was suffocating under the outstretched, choking hands of bad news. the only good memories i could correlate with autumn only reinforced how long ago it had been since i was consistently optimistic during the months of october through april. i was growing up. fall used to be swimming longer hours, of getting back to school, flirting with my boyfriend, descending into winter depressions. i could smell the bleach of the natatorium i woke up in every morning at five-thirty; i could smell homeroom with its mix of anxious sweat and freshly baked, commercial bagels; i could smell the detergent that had to have been tide but i could never find it anywhere else besides his cheap polo shirts; i could smell my room and the cinnamon candles i burned in there for no reason except i was a bored pyromaniac. where had the time gone? it had been eight years. so long. and yet, here i was. only twenty-two.