Autumn

Thank you for having me, death. Please excuse me, must get back to it, life.

And whoever makes up the story makes up the world, Daniel said. So always try to welcome people into the home of your story. That’s my suggestion.

How does making things up welcome people? Elisabeth said.

What I’m suggesting, Daniel said, is, if you’re telling a story, always give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you’d welcome when it comes to yourself.

She liked doing melancholy things like that.

You will stop trusting me, and quite right, because I’d be a liar. We’ll all be lessened by the lie.

Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.

The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them

Regrets when you’re dead? A past when you’re dead? Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

To feel even just the thought of one’s own bared self near someone else’s beauty

How many worlds can you hold in a hand.

In a handful of sand.

If I am destined to be happy with you here – how short is the longest Life.

John Keats