fall cravings...

the tea isn't hot anymore. only lukewarm but still it tastes like home. sipping, letting it trickle down your throat and then finishing with smacking lips. hair falls into your face again. fingers rub sleep out of your eyes. a bird sings outside, welcoming the hope of fall to this sunny valley. it is still cool outside, but you are not fooled, just because the calender says september doesn't mean that it won't hit 100 degrees today. you stop to crack all of your fingers and toes because they need to breathe. you need to breathe.

fall has always been my favorite season. i have written about the alluring feeling of fall so many times. i have poems and stories and starry eyed freshman college accounts of this season. a season of change and possibilities, hot tea and movement through the stale dry heat of summer.

this year it's different. i am not gearing up for a hard, cold winter. i am not walking through piles of brightly colored leaves strewn across every street. i will though. the leaves will fall here but not for a month or two. it will get cold enough to wear a sweatshirt past 8am, but i will have to wait. it is still dry here, it is still summer. once the rain comes things will cool down, things will feel more like home. it is different this year.

different and in a way so much better. i have never felt so at home and yet so far away from it. can you understand? my best friend is with me. my love wakes me up with soft words and softer kisses. he goes to work and i go to school. learning. finally learning again. awed by how much french i have forgotten and furious with teachers for slandering my God. oh public education. it has been a while.

it feels so natural to be back in school. so natural to come home from a long day of classes to find my husband smiling, pulling me into a hug, kissing my forehead. so natural. yet i am so homesick. i want to feel cold again. i want crisp natural air not just air-conditioning. homesick for a place that isn't home anymore.

cracks neck.

-bekah