Autumn afternoons are about loss. The falling leaves and drooping trees sing of could-have-beens and almost-weres. Summer leaves, and takes missed opportunity with it, and you find yourself left with lukewarm tea and frozen strawberries.

There’s something amazing about watching fruit defrost, sacred, even. It’s akin to witnessing a birth or a baptism, just the deep spirituality of ripeness and readiness, but there’s an underlying awareness that it’s not real. That it’s just fake, reheated nature, and even with the sunlight streaming through the window, you’re not a real part of it. There’s a deadness, an emotional fakeness to it like being alone amongst friends; the companionship is there, but the camaraderie is missing.

September is like losing an old friend. The warmth is there, but it doesn’t caress like it used to.