The Season's Solace

Dear Mike,

Annually, I make my trek to memorialize the day I brought you home to a rocky land of cactus and Mesquite thorn. Ceremoniously, I cling to you through your family in a silence that is interrupted intermittently by the call of a wild turkey. We gather on this harsh prickly land, and I brace myself for the season’s chill. Your family comforts me, though, within this Hill Country’s beauty that you knew so intimately.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber whisper with a frigid November breath. There, vermillion dotting rolling hills against an azure sky, hushed briars nestle in for winter. A sunset highlights the spiny edges of a Prickly Pear and the golden seed heads of wild grasses. Muted beauty that you are continuously revealing to me still.

I never cared much for Fall. I never wanted Summer to end. You and I together finding so many sun bright things to do. Since your death that blindingly blank summer day, I long for Fall’s consoling blanket of solitude. I long to escape failed expectations of summer togetherness, like the way a fallen leaf is alee the cold Autumn wind. Now the quiescent place you call home mirrors my parched brittle soul that is beginning to adorn new colors of beauty you’ve yet to see.

Fitting it was then, that it was Fall when I carried you home. We spread your ashes among rock and bone under changing trees. We held each other to say good bye and remember you, but that reclusive fire that took you, laid hold of me. It’s been changing my hues to burnt earthen pigments. A newfound beauty decries the emptiness that the fire refines. Fire and ashes in my veins, but my bones are growing cold. Autumn’s beauty carries me beyond the soundless deer seeking shelter, beyond your ashes undisturbed.