Equinox.

The night before the Autumn equinox I had a dream so vivid that when I woke up, I wondered genuinely why I couldn't remember getting home. It was you and I, in a bar I'd never seen before, drinking red wine and catching up in a way we haven't for a long time. You told me you were getting married and I was happy to hear it, or at least had got better at pretending to be. I told you I was uncurling after too many defensive seasons; starting to trust again that just because everything went wrong it doesn't mean things can't go right anymore. You asked if I was happy. I said mostly. I asked the same of you and was almost convinced when you said yeah, you were. It was so good to see you again.

*

I cannot even bring myself to type that I know the relationship between letting go and the leaves falling is a close one. It's a cliche that everyone has tried to twist in to their own; I've seen countless stories of starting again over Pumpkin Spice Lattes, or how a new pencil scratching on a new notebook is the only spark you need to make palaces from paragraphs.

The leaves fall, though, and I can't help but think of you. Of how it's been whole cycles of falling and growing back since I watched you leave and thought I'd miss you always. I don't. Not always. But always and forever are different things.

It was cold, then it got warmer.

*
I thought of you a lot, but never wrote about you.

I thought about you less, and wrote about you a little, mostly by accident.

I wrote about you a lot, and thought about you only in those lines on the page.

I wrote it all out, and found I was happy with where it left us, somewhere just out of reach; the kind of history they don't teach 'cause it's barely history at all. Close still; not a legacy yet. Like we could tip back in to it at any time. Almost over.

Not quite.

*

I was smiling when I opened my eyes, and didn't immediately remember why. It crept back in slowly as I stretched and wriggled and pulled the duvet tighter before I'd have to inevitably let it go. That was exactly what I'd done with you, too, in the dream; the bar I'd never seen with the person who could tell by the way I sighed how I was feeling. Pulled you in; held you close and tight in the hope a little bit of the essence of you would seep in to me; that I'd be able to wonder what you'd do, when I needed a little bit of that maverick courage. That I'd know I was getting it right when I could imagine you; hear you somewhere in my mind, saying "...Interesting".

And then. Loosened my grip. Not a surrender, but a choice.

The first day of a new season. You get to choose the ghosts you carry with you, as you cross over. There's a version of me that could love you forever, probably, and a version I left on the other side. Between the sheets. It was Thursday. Not long until they'd be thrown in to a hot wash, and come out clean.

I kicked out my feet. Lay there knowing the universe was complex enough for more than one truth at a time; that I'd think of you, every now and then; that we'd be in and out of each others lives, but that somewhere between midnight and morning I had moved on. Left you there, in the bar with the fairy lights; cold for September, drinking your red wine.

It wasn't happy, although I definitely felt it. It wasn't sad either. It just... was.

When day and night are at equal length; no more light than darkness, no more darkness than light. Just a fact. A recognition that it is what it is. A balance.

An equinox.