autumn, again

the sun will leave me soon, and I don't know what to do.

I’ve been spending slow mornings with the sun.

Those early, intimate moments with the sunrise, when her halo isn’t yet set upon her brow and I can look her in the eye. Any longer and she rises from the bedside into the heavens, where I can no longer bear the sight of her naked.

Where she rises now, there is a slit between the frame and the cracked doorway, and she dresses herself in a robe of morning mist, painting her way up the wall of my bedroom. Then, she shrugs the robe off and wakes the world.

Mornings are growing colder now, and we watch each other, bright and early and pink, in the solitude of the morning. In those moments, I feel so alone that I am as infinite and everywhere as the sun. Anonymous and glowing.

I know she’ll set again soon, and I will grow heavy, tired, cold. I’ll recede again, shrinking away like springtime touch-me-nots. But now. Now, she shines for me while I shine for her.

In the winter, I seem to lose my creativity. My mind enters its own little hibernation. I lose my spark, my drive. I curl in on myself, grasping desperately for something to consume rather than create; something to keep me warm through the long nights.

I reach for my phone, for something to read, something to savor—as long as it is nothing of my own. I bristle at the thought of creation and instead gorge myself on the words of others. Maybe I am saving it all up for when I bloom again in the springtime, but something about this autumn has made my fall from creative grace feel so much more difficult. This year, I want to continue to be something. But there is nothing left in me this late in the year. The leaves are browning, the birds are fleeing, and I am stuck here inside my own mind, fat with the words of others, starving off of my own prose.

Now, I spend all the time I can with the sun. I am already anticipating my bereavement when she leaves me and the starry nights stretch on. Soon, when I wake, she will not wake with me. I will be alone in the mornings, and she will be returning to rest by the time I leave work each day. I am soaking up all I can, and I cannot bear to let any of it leave me in the meantime. I become selfish in the fall and winter. Every ounce of creativity is hoarded in the hole I can tunneled myself into. I drape myself in the word of others, and I hold on tight until the sun comes out again. I take and take and take until I am sure it will sustain me through the winter.

I am so afraid that this year will be the year I fail to reemerge. What if I curl up so tight I calcify, fossilize? What if the cold sets into my bones and my fingertips blacken with frostbite and disuse?

What if I don’t wake up at all?

I’m rationing my words already; I can feel it. Each word I pull from myself aches a little. The empty space in me fills with cold air, burning my lungs and chilling my marrow. The sun is setting now, and my hibernation is growing nearer. Tomorrow, the sun will rise slightly to the left of the crack in my door. Soon, we will not emerge at all.

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I suppose they have a clinical term for the way I feel in the wintertime. I don’t prefer it, so I’ll call it my emotional hibernation. This will be my first hibernation since promising myself to lean further into my writing. I grow more and more scared each day that I only had one summer in me for creation. Here’s to hoping that I have more in me, even as the days grow shorter.

thanks for reading!

love you, bye
julia <3