I am never really up right before she comes in, so I don’t see when she quietly comes to sit and wait. When my eyes open to see her, she has poured herself over my desk and across the walls. Shadows follow right behind her, lingering softly at her corners and creating shapes on my wall. When the clouds cut in for a dance, she ignores me briefly to dance with them, twirling and moving all over my floors. And when their dance is over, her smile beams brightly at me again.

She lines the crack of my door, inviting me out of my bed and into the kitchen. There, on the east, where she rises, she is in her fullest glory. She goes around the room, kissing the different objects in the kitchen: cabinets, tables, apples, plants, half-drunk glasses of water with lip stains, crumbs of bread, over the marbles, and on to me. She kisses me whole, welcoming me to another Fall morning. I embrace her because tomorrow I may not see her.

Tomorrow she may go dancing with the clouds…