Walking Home in Autumn

I remember the last time I walked home by myself. 

It was a year ago now, the Cold was biting at my cheeks, at my hands that carried my lunchbox. The food was cold as the air and uneaten. My stomach convulsed at the thought of eating and my feet continued forward.

The Cold stung at my eyes but it only added to the already present burn. My face was hot and steaming in the air, buried in the collar of my coat to ignore the ever present lump building in the back of my throat.

I looked anywhere but up. Up at the red growing strong against green, at the too early Christmas lights, at the beauty of yellow and the smell of cool air interrupted by the gasoline from leaking trucks. I looked anywhere but up.

I looked down at the brown crunching underneath my feet that felt as if they were bleeding. It was barely two miles home but the edging ache in my bones was eating my anger and feeding the exhaustion.

It grows behind my ribs. I couldn't breathe that day.

(Can I breathe now? Could I ever really?)

The Halloween cats smiled at me from my neighbor's porch, I was almost home. There were ages between the mere minutes it would take to get to my front door. 

The crunch under my feet, my eyes on the road, the sting and the burn and the lump in the back of my throat, and the reckless feeling of you don't even really care you're just crying because it feels good

Crying does, in fact, not feel good.

A car honked at me and I stopped suddenly, one foot in the road, my house glaring down on the other side of the street. The car whizzed past, the driver yelling out the window.

"Watch where you're going, kid!"

I stepped back. Breathe, the hot feeling on my face and the rot behind my ribs hitting steadily like a heartbeat against the bone there. Breathe.

(Maybe it was my heart.)

(I don't have one of those.)

I crossed the street normally, looking both ways like a normal person. The door was open. Neither of my parents were home.

I shook off my shoes, peeled off my coat, set down the backpack full of homework that was not going to get done. Ever, probably. The world was too quiet. I needed something.

To ease the ache, the heat of my face, the wet sniffling feeling after crying. To erase the evidence of everything.

I went outside. I lay down. I looked up.

The sky was alight with the fire of autumn leaves, burning their way through the blue. A smokeless fire, blowing with the breeze. They detached themselves one by one by one, a simple string of notes that fell towards me.

The grass was no longer green and soft, it scratched at my neck and my ears, the backs of my arms. The Cold bit and whirled in the wind around me but the smooth chill of the grass against my back quieted it. 

My stomach hurt. I breathed in the Cold, stinging against the inside of my nose. It made the hurt lessen, just a bit.

I got up. I went inside. I made tea, put on a sweater. My mother had left pumpkin donuts on the counter. Eating hurt but not eating hurt more. I took one.

I sat at the window, tea beginning to burn my hand and the donut half bitten, still in my mouth. I couldn't bring myself to swallow.

The autumn chill made it through the window, making it freeze. I leaned my forehead against it, cooling the fading heat of my face. 

I don't think I moved.

I don't walk home alone anymore.