The Threshold

Autumn's last breath catches in the skeletal arms of the birch. Nothing falls. Nothing rises yet. The air holds its shape like glass.

We stand in the grammar between seasons, where endings wear the soft face of beginnings. The light slants through at angles that don't exist in summer or winter.

I've forgotten the name of this time— this pause before the world decides what color it will be. The squirrels seem to know something.

Even the frost hesitates, crystalline and tentative, as if asking permission to cover what is still alive.