Walking

"Warmest day forever / Feeling the warmth from your skin / How was I supposed to know life would / Make a joke out of all our love / Everything passing by is not coming back / How could I be so careless / Its not like we live forever / How was I supposed to know life would / Make a joke out of all our love / Everything passing by is not coming back / Everything passing by is not coming back"
-VAST, "Everything Passing By"

I walk to the coffee shop in the morning fog, wondering if the fog will abate later today but thinking it probably won't. I juggle words in my head, snippets of a poem I'll never write, distract myself with words as I so often do, try to lose myself in them. I cross Market Street, with my backpack and my music, just like any other day, but it isn't any other day, it's the first day of December, cold and wet, and the first day of what I can only assume will be a new chapter in my life. I watch a single sycamore leaf, still partially green but also yellow, and brown, burned by an absent sun, drifting slowly towards the sidewalk, and it is as if it is drifting through me too, opening me in places that I had tried to keep closed. Just like that, I'm crying, as I walk alone through the fog, crying, wondering: how did this happen? How did this happen? I remember warmth, I remember touch, and I remember dreams, some dreams that had become reality and some that had never managed to cross over, and I am crying, and I am walking.