The Smell of Fall
By Drew Hendrickson
The smell of Fall, O! So sweet.
It brings a tear to my eye, the smell of Fall,
the birds will leave, the leaves will fall, all while we experience the smell of Fall, vanilla, cinnamon, chai, and hot apple pies are things we love during the smell of Fall, friends, family, and strangers alike grow together and bond during the smell of Fall. Many have loved, many have lived, many have grown during the smell of Fall, The smell of Fall, O! So sweet, brings love, joy, and peace alike, all while we experience the smell of Fall.
Fall of ‘95
By Tom Pinkston
I made roasted onion and garlic soup
and baked bread to go with it.
I courted you with that bread
and I knew
that you knew
what it was
I was trying to do
- get in your pants -
it was true.
But there were more ways to it than just that
I can name them, one by one,
like the candles you burned.
The diesel engine of the passenger train
as it idled in the valley of the buildings downtown where we lived
in our musty old, second floor apartment
the one above the used book store.
The tiny coffee shop half a block up the sidewalk where we both worked part time.
Scones from the bakery on the corner.
A cool night’s draft seeping in through the cracks in the putty,
we undress each other and lay together to get warm - no heat in that old barn of a building.
You open
I test a soft, warm breath across the petals of the orchid you keep
you quiver
and beckon.
____
Another year.
We say, “There goes another, just like the others.”
It’s become stale,
a mold.
It’s not what we want for each other anymore.
We wanted to share
forever
like your mother’s mother’s one remaining teacup
filled with clean water
and the last gardenia.
By Dylan Roggeman
Autumn is a time of falling leaves and aging trees.
Slower bees and the first freeze.
But what I enjoy most of all,
are the scents that warm me through the Fall.
Wet piles of leaves decomposing
The sharpness of the air quickly nosing
Cinnamon and apple intertwined in loving embrace
Pumpkin spice smacking my face.
The smells are intense, like the wood of the fence
Outdoor scents are what make sense
Every kid should have the opportunity
To spend Autumn outside, leaves and the slide
Frozen grass and haunted hayrides.
I think you'll find the smell is reaal niiice.
By Kiersten Graves
I watch as a leaf falls slowly from a tree, fluttering in the wind.
It looks so peaceful and content following every leaf that has gone before it,
dying to make way for the growth of new leaves that will start to arrive when spring
gets here.
As of now, though, the trees will look barren for a while.
It’s been getting colder, and the sun has been hiding for a while. It has rained
for three days straight, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had rained for three
more.
However it didn’t, and the sun is out of hiding.
It would be hard to tell it was raining at all, if the petrichor wasn’t ligering.
Today feels alive, despite the fact I’m in a graveyard, and anything remaining
here is dead or dying.
With a bouquet of Aster flowers in hand, I make my way over to a familiar
tombstone.
I place the flowers on the dirt, tracing the letters carved into the stone.
Cynthia.
How I miss her.
She passed away just last autumn.
I remember it very well.
The aching sound of her voice as she pleaded to stay alive. The prominence of
fear in her eyes.
The surprise when she tumbled back and knocked her perfume bottle off of
the table, shattering into glass shards and leaving the smell of chemicals and
sandalwood soaked into the floor for weeks on end.
The silence after her heart stopped beating.
At first I recall the regret of knowing, but now I’m almost certain I never did it,
and perhaps something else had happened that led to her death.
But if it wasn’t me, then who could it be?
I feel a chill run up my spine.
Who could it be?
I look around the graveyard.
The air always feels a bit colder here, for whatever reason. Maybe it is simply
the shaking of trees against the wind that makes it all seem colder.
I stood up, collecting the old and dried roses I had placed at Cynthia’s grave
just a few weeks before.
Who else would it have been? It was just me. I was the only one there. The only
one with a knife. And the only one to watch her bleed to her death.
The wind kicks up, whispering past me like someone quietly telling a secret.
A secret indeed.
I move back and start heading towards the exit of the grave yard.
I can’t help but wonder if Cynthia will ever forgive me.
Assuming it was ever truly me to begin with.
Perhaps I will never know myself.
The memory haunts me just as much as the regret.
So long as no one knows, perhaps I don’t need to know, either.