It’s impossible in times of great stress to tell the weather from the storm within. So the season came in aggressive with beauty, with each flaming orange a glimmer of the Hell within. Each red leaf a failing heart adrift on the winds.

Impossible. To know love, to be loved, and to hate yourself so wholly. Not due to what you are, but what you are not. Impossible to tell the shades and shadows of a haunted heart from the very real sadness growing in your most precious and prescient places.

How does one know when they’ve become impossible to live with? When they are left. And in time, every sly nod and foreshadowed evening becomes a map you could follow down some improbable river to this day. But its a rear view POV. Because it’s impossible.

Impossible to know when the line was crossed. Impossible to feel this way still about someone who so scorched my Earth. Impossible to carry this daily without telling a soul, without sharing a single ounce of the weight.

Couples keep secrets. And it’s impossible to know when that bond breaks and you need seek shelter in some other province of protection. So I never told a soul. Until a dear friend brought me coffee and I fell apart completely,.

Now…the lake grows cold. The fireworks diminish but the smell never departs. The reflection of the brilliant fall leaves becomes an offense to your system.

And it’s October now. Your sainted October. And you have had your world torn apart.

And there’s not enough medicine to make you feel anything.

And everything is medicine.