October

Autumn alone is enough reason to live here. I joke that it's all of two weeks, but it's probably more like three. Three glorious weeks.

The towering maple out back is decked out in a rusty sort of cranberry, and the way those leaves flap and twist in the sun makes up for five long months of frozen, slushy muck. Five long months of muggy nights, laced with mosquitoes.

It's almost like a year's worth of beauty gets crammed into three small weeks, saturated to the point that I can hardly stand it, that it's almost unbearable to walk outside into the middle of all that autumn.