After the squirrel, after the bread
I.
4 a.m. — the heater hums its question. Afternoon, the air conditioner answers back.
Between them: my body, a pendulum of want.
II.
Winter is a furnace. Summer, the frantic living. But here, autumn — I am learning the grammar of letting go while still breathing.
The verb conjugates itself: to fall, falling, fallen.
In six months the script flips. Spring will punch through , that fierce birth, but now? Now I am winding down into the season with no proper name.
III.
There is a particular loneliness here. You haven’t made amends with the possibilities that shimmered, just one season ago, like heat off asphalt.
The squirrels know this. Their bodies ask: Was it enough? Will I remember what sustained me when white erases all direction?
IV.
My mother’s hands on frozen dough. Propane oven. Twenty-eight feet of aluminum wrapped in ice, our igloo of survival.
Outside: squirrels taking inventory. A bear, surrendering to sleep.
Inside: our faces flush with warmth, hearts full of bread “freshly” baked, as if love could make anything new.
V.
My father in freezing rain. An igloo of purpose around him — the bread, the wife, the kids, all of it keeping him warm from the inside out.
This is the duty: to move through pelting wind toward what waits, tender, on the other side.
VI.
The truth is simple and unbearable: the next steps were never mine to choose.
The best plan I have made is this: Expect not to know. Carry history like a coat. Trust that when winter comes, I will act , not merely react, and live that day.
VII.
Fall doesn’t have a name like birth. We call it the twilight years. The winding down. The long exhale.
But maybe after a lifetime of living, this is what’s needed — a separate season, designed with a twinge of nothingness, poised between the two great extremes.
A season that teaches: survival is not certainty. It is the squirrel’s faith. The bear’s surrender. The bread rising despite everything.
VIII.
I wake. I consider the heater. By afternoon, I’m thinking about the AC.
Between them: this body learning to be enough.
BB Grey--musings 
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