suddenly there’s September.
hopefully it brings things
that August couldn’t.
though I can’t help but wonder
as I watch the leaves descend,
if I could shed and fall to pieces as well
and show up brand new
and beatiful
next spring.

I feel like trying again.

Jessica Jocelyn

Ironic, yet perfect, isn’t it? That I’ve waited for October to start to share this poem that’s taken up space in my September brain? Because it is, after all, about falling apart. Falling down. Fall-ing, if autumn was made a verb. And why shouldn’t it be? Fall, as an action item. Fall, as an occurrence. Fall, my state of being. 

I just realized today that the word verb is a noun. Of course it is. Because nothing is what it seems at a glance. Nor should it be. Everything is more complex than the costume it wears. The book more complicated than its cover. The human more labyrinthine than their shell. More tangled. More multifarious. And yes, this is a rabbit trail from my point, but the older I become, the more often I travel the rabbits’ roads because they take me Places I Didn’t Intend to Go, and it’s drifting from the carefully curated life that’s allowed me to cultivate curiousity and eschew expectations and wander a wilderness of beauty and wonder. You know?

I’ll admit, though, that sometimes I follow the Wrong Rabbit, aka the rushing, buttoned-up White one who’s always late, late, late. No time to say, “hello, good-bye,” I’m late, I’m late, I’m late. I guess the problem is that the Wrong Rabbit is a long-time squatter in my brain and his mantra is a metronome, tick-tock, tick-tocking away, reminding me Something Is Left Undone. And also, Productivity Equals Worth. 

There’s a reason, after all, that I write and write and write about rest and respite and the Defiant Act of Being when our fatherland is the Dominion of Do and Doers and Doing and our value is assessed only after we check the box called Done. This is my soap box issue, and my audience is myself. It has taken / is taking me years–decades–to begin to work my way free of Do and to learn the language and customs of Be. I’m still quite obviously a foreigner in my adopted homeland, and when I’m tired I revert to my first language, berating myself for all the lonely checkboxes on my lists that aren’t receiving their mark. 

September, especially. And now October. The list items left undone are legion, and any I do manage to mark replicate like the heads of the hydra, the list longer even after I Do. Add in the usual seasonal labor of maintaining my mental health while the dread of winter peaks around the corner, and I’m a little sunk. Not bad. Not yet. But slipping a little beneath the surface. Beginning to melt into soft earth. Deteriorating fractionally, with the barest fuzz of initial decay. 

But then I wonder. What if sinking is the work of this season? What if the Defiant Act of Being right now is relaxing like the leaves on the trees, still clinging to vibrancy, mostly, and turning our faces to the waning sun, but also withering a skosh around the edges, accepting that our brittle bits are breaking away and wending on gentle currents of air to a ground that’s beginning to cool and deliquesce? 

What if Fall-ing is an edict for those of us who are striving to Be? What if Fall-ing to pieces is part and parcel with this cycle of the year? What if shedding and deteriorating and, yes, resting is the same thing as feeding the soil where we build our lives? What if this time of breaking down and staying there a while is necessary to put nutrients back into the earth to make it rich and loamy for a future season of growth?

What if there’s nothing wrong with me or the way I feel? What if I’m exactly where I’m meant to be?