The Death of Summer                                                                                                                          

Dark clouds spread across the morning sky as if the great author of the world has dropped his ink well onto the atmosphere below.

There is a chill in the air. The South wind with it’s equatorial warmth is gone, and the North wind sails over great fields of ice, and it permeates every bone in my body.

I descend from my bedroom.  The steps of the staircase creak with friction, wood on wood, or are those the creaks of my joints, bone on bone?

I sit on my assigned half of the loveseat in the living room.  It no longer surrounds me with the warmth of a friend, but with the unfamiliar cold of a stranger. 

I cuddle under a colorful crocheted throw, and click on the TV remote.  A news anchor and his foil banter endlessly about last night’s sadness, as the weatherman starts to lie.

Sadder, and darker still is my uncertainty about what the season of sleep will bring.  The first rumble of the oil fueled heating system plays bass to the funeral dirge of the season.