Day 823, October 3, 2022

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Cruel Month

The end of September is melancholy, 
like a brush ink painting of a marsh 
or the taste of a breath mint on the tongue. 

It is what comes after anticipation, 
a resetting of the odometer, 
the drudgery of finishing a box of cereal. 

How can you say that April is the cruelest month 
when September makes me cry so? 

A constant reminder of the things I have neglected, 
the people I have lost, 
the laziness stealing momentum into entropy. 

Count the decades on a hand, 
we have become old. 
No wistful looks, 
just a gasp of surprise. 

How the years have passed, 
as if we have all been off battling windmills, 
beheading dragons whose neck spews forth books 
and other blatantly esoteric pursuits. 

In the meantime, in the meantime, 
children have grown and moved away, 
and countless Septembers have become October.


 

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