Autumn

What do you want me to do with...those letters?

She heard her mom from above her, upstairs in her former room...she had returned after graduating from college to the home where she was raised.  And now her mom was dismantling her youth, putting it into one box at a time.

She knew exactly what her mom would be holding...a blue shoebox, with letters written in pencil and pen, a familiar cursive sometimes barely legible addressing her name and home.  Some had been hand delivered, in an afternoon of high school...some had Foreign Post Office stamps from when they had been sent from a far off war.  She knew they were a time-stamp of her life, the last years of high school, the full years of college...and they were efforts.  Efforts or perhaps reminders, she couldn't remember...standing at the foot of the stairs, a box of stuffed animals peering out at her.

She heard her mom's footsteps creaking towards the top of the landing...in her hand she held the shoe box and a question on her face...it was like a bucket of memories in those letters.  She knew she would never re-read them...didn't need to.  The themes were consistent and the same.

Just put them back in my closet Mom.  

Her mom raised an eyebrow and returned back to her dismantling.  She knew she was keeping it as something comforting...and maybe someday she wouldn't need those bit of paper and ink.  But for now she just watched her mom return to her old room and drop the box in her closet with a noise she could feel.

Outside her front door the leaves were just trying to pull out the last greens of color they could muster...the early mornings had been cool, with a little fog.  The James River was the color of the earth, dark and rich and when riding the ferry she had to wear a sweater and a scarf.

Coming home after the final summer semester she knew she had to leave this small southern place, needed to find something besides the flat tones near Waverly.  But she had spent so many autumns here, so many times she had embraced the fall, the start of school, returning to friends...

He had been a little bit of that return each time...she'd see him in the hallways...after that one summer when they had blossomed for a bit and then school and others had intertwined...she hadn't pushed him away...she just didn't pull him along.  He was there like initials in a tree, reminding her but not cloying.  He had started the letters, brief simple notes to just let her know that she looked good in a dress...or had an awesome tan.  They were intimate, but immature...but she kept them.

He had volunteered to go serve in the military at a time when others were raising their hand to join...she had wondered at his decision, had told him of his foolishness...they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend...not since that summer long ago.    But each Halloween they ended up at her porch, a candle burning on a protective plate and they would talk...long into the dark.  They were familiar.  They allowed silence to sit between them like a blanket, comfortable.

She always liked to come out the morning of November 1st and see that plate, a melted candle blotching the whiteness...it reminded her of time.

In one of his first letters from the war he had placed a piece of melted wax in the envelope, about the size of a quarter...the black wick was still in it.  He had merely written If there was a time in my life that I could return to it would be the Halloween nights we spent in quiet.  She knew immediately what he felt.

What about these old concert tickets stuck in your mirror? Her mom yelled again from upstairs.
She stood looking out the front door, the light gray coming in through the windows...her mom tapping her hand against another box in her hand.

You can throw them away.