Soot from the chimney

 Each perfect silence that lingers between the laurels reveals distant echoes—meetings from lost times that somehow exist in the present. Your eyes will shine when the ocean breeze brushes your time-worn cheeks. You’ll walk into the house carrying the weight of dreams that dangle over deep ravines. Even knowing there are still untraveled paths, you’ll wander through that same house, searching for whoever sealed off the doors and windows that once looked out onto the mountains. Maybe it was you, even though you knew life would carry time away, just like that long-gone summer love.

And now, it’s time to speak of it. This won’t be your first run-in with that strange past, and it certainly won’t be a pleasant memory—but I promise it’ll be a meaningful evening by the fireplace. You’ll take your usual cup of tea and settle slowly into the familiar couch in the living room. Your bare feet will feel the roughness of the rug, nearly as old as the neighbor’s eldest daughter, yet it hasn’t moved from its spot in decades. Don’t pretend time hasn’t etched its traces on your body—we know where those legs have walked and how many cities have admired your youthful beauty.

Comfortably at home, you’ll light the fire. There may not be enough logs to finish out the winter, but you’re not afraid—you’ve already felt how each morning reflects the crispness of daily life. The pine trees have stopped swaying. That’s your cue to dive into old photographs.

The first doesn’t quicken your pulse. The next few only pull up sepia-toned flashes of childhood. But then you find the one that stirs something: he’s there, just as you remember him. That same blue shirt, the jeans even bluer than the sky, the soft smile—he was always shy about showing his teeth—and that elegant hairstyle you loved to run your fingers through. You remember that day in the park, and the first tear slips down your cheek. You take a sip of tea, keep looking through the album… then stop. You decide to cut out every remaining page. You don’t want to go back to a past that haunts your dreams.

In the distance, you hear the rain—the sound you adore. It turns you into a dreamer. Each drop dances on the old tin roof your father installed when you were only twenty-nine. You cradle your tea, its warmth long gone. Minutes, hours have passed and the cold has stolen its heat. You turn your focus back to the rain, worried it might start leaking through the ceiling of the big room. You don’t want the mahogany and pine furniture—bought with the sweat of your youth—to be damaged.

You place buckets and jars in their usual spots, already knowing where the drips will land. You inhale deeply, filling your lungs with that heavenly scent only water and earth can create. The garden gleams, drenched and alive. Then—someone is knocking at the front door. Hard. As if your ears have failed you, it takes a moment to register. It’s been raining for hours. The streets are empty. No one should be out. Still, the pounding grows louder and more urgent, as if they intend to break it down.

You move quietly, approaching the door without a sound. The banging stops, abruptly, crashing like waves against the rocks of your favorite beach—the one you used to visit together. So many moments lived there. Your hand reaches for the knob. You unlock it and begin to turn it slowly… but it jams. As if someone is holding it from the other side. You try harder, using strength you thought was long gone. Your palm slicks with sweat. Suddenly, a push from outside—and it swings open.

And oh—what a moment. Time freezes. Your skin tingles, your pupils widen, and the shock is so deep that everything stills. The last heartbeat. The last cup of tea. The final rain. One final brush of bare feet against the rug. The scent of earth after the storm. The last bit of warmth.

A dream interrupted.

And the final leaf of autumn falls.