I committed to wearing flip flops
or walking barefoot
only a moment ago.
Now it’s September, Labour Day
and the warm long days
I’m just getting used to
are promising to leave us.
I put on my boots today,
walked around in them without tying the laces,
just tucked them inside like sheet corners.
I felt tall, solid and cool
in the soothing September rain
where people, shaken
from a frantic summer dream,
fell to the earth around me
like drops coming to rest
in their sheltered rainforest nest.
Now, unlike yesterday,
the promise of May
is in the future, not the past.
Sun fading from my grasp
like the time she went cold,
pretending to love me for a while
until neither of us could deny her absence.
And what remained?
Only clouds of loss,
vague emptiness,
flip-flopping mess,
witnessless,
tearing at the sheets,
in a barren bed
that used to be bright red roses.
Used to be…
September’s refrain.
Used to be me now I’m what?
Used to be…
September, you melancholy dream.