| I stand in front of my home, and overhead the skies boil, thick grey clouds—an impending storm. The indifferent November wind—cool hand of desolation—sends leaves skittering over the sidewalk, over the steps to my home, over the dying red barberries and hostas and mauve-flowering sedum I so carefully tended over the summer. I shiver, to think that this place will become even colder in so short a time, that this very vantage must be overthrown by winter and I am helpless against it.
In the window, my husband has lit a lamp for me, its golden light flooding the lawn and illuminating with a stark clarity the skeletons of the leafless trees in our yard. Warmly it beckons, yet I remain outside as that brittle November wind whips my hair about my face and infuses a deep chill within my bones. In the window, my cat sits, her tail twitching as she observes me, pawing at the glass and mewing for me to come inside; yet I remain where I stand, for just a moment longer. I am alone, out here, at this hour, and who else is to witness such things?
Thunder growls, the wind dashes an icy raindrop against my cheek, and I close my eyes, feeling the world dark and wild around me, more immense than it has ever seemed before. I open them again to the light, the poor mewling creature in the window, the cracks in the front walk and the chipped paint around the door; to the plants that will wither and die over the winter and yet return, unfazed, at the dawn of spring—
The wind howls at my back but it is not what spurs me forth. With the rain pattering at my shoulders and the dead leaves swirling at my feet and the clouds flowing dark and unfathomable overhead I begin to climb the steps that I know will lead me Home. |
