autumn wind again—
leaves don’t ask where they’re falling,
they just let it go
The morning I missed the train, the sky was the color of lukewarm dishwater.
A color you wouldn’t bother to name.
I’d slept badly again—woke up three times for no good reason, just the usual low-humming worry pulling at the edges of sleep like a loose thread in an old sweater. I got out of bed late, made instant coffee I didn’t even want, and wandered into the station like someone rehearsing being awake.
When I saw the train doors close, I didn’t run.
I just stood there, hands in my pockets, watching it pull away like it was taking something with it I didn’t quite need anymore.
There wasn’t much left to do after that. So I sat on the cold metal bench, drank the coffee that had already gone bitter, and stared at the empty track like it might open up and tell me a secret.
That’s when it hit me—
not like an epiphany, more like someone whispering from the next room:
you’ll be dead soon.
It wasn’t dark.
It wasn’t heavy.
It was strangely clean.
Almost peaceful, like wind threading through tall grass, bending everything just slightly.
Most people hear that and flinch.
But I’ve been carrying it around lately,
not like a warning—more like a pocket stone.
A reminder. A little weight that keeps things honest.
Because knowing I’ll be gone has done something weird to time.
It’s slowed things down and pulled everything closer.
The way strangers’ voices blend in cafés.
The exact moment sunlight hits the water glass on my table at 3:14 p.m.
The fact that pigeons never seem to be in a hurry, and yet they always get where they’re going.
Before, I used to worry about what I was doing with my life.
Whether I was late.
Falling behind.
Wasting potential.
Now, I mostly just want to feel the water when I wash the dishes.
To answer messages when I want to, not out of some twitching sense of obligation.
To go to bed when I’m tired,
not when I’ve finally earned it.
It sounds simple. It is simple.
That’s the scary part.
We build entire lives around complexity to avoid that truth.
Someone once wrote that death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
I didn’t understand that the first time I read it.
I was too young. Too busy chasing things.
But now I see it in everything.
In my plants, slowly dying and coming back in new shapes.
In relationships that change form but don’t entirely vanish.
In the way even silence carries something—
a memory, maybe, or a faint echo of laughter from another room.
Sometimes I walk through the city and look at people and think,
you’ll be gone too.
And for a second, it makes me ache in that soft, stupid way you ache
when you realize everything you love is temporary.
But then it lifts.
Because the flip side of knowing we’ll all vanish
is knowing this—this tiny, forgettable now—
is all we ever really get.
And suddenly, I’m not in such a rush.
Suddenly, it’s okay if I don’t write the book.
If I never fix whatever it is people think needs fixing.
If I don’t reply right away.
If I forget the names of stars.
If I burn the rice.
If I miss the train.
Because I’ll be dead soon.
And so will everything that ever felt like it mattered too much.
And somehow,
that makes this lukewarm coffee,
this quiet bench,
this hour where nothing is happening—
feel like everything.
life 