Now, the days grow shorter. With each passing moment, each passing day, the sun sets sooner, afraid of the cold, but the stars shine longer, embracing it. Gray skies paint over blues ones often, and burnt orange and brown leaves coat the chilled ground. My roof’s shingles are covered in fall’s first frost. It sends chills through my clothes. I gaze up at the crystalline stars and their perpetually encompassing black canvas that contrasts and defines them so beautifully. The canvas that just waits to be painted by the gentle brush of a shooting star, for but a moment.

Fall was the time I met you, so long ago, but also the time I lost you. I lost you, a dear friend. Not forever, no. Nothing lasts forever, even things that seem to drag by. Things you may take for granted. Things that are there one day and gone the next. Memories so easily covered and buried by leaves.
A bitterly cold autumn night wind scrapes over me, sending chills flooding through my body. Planes lazily fly over me. They are so distant and small, yet they are massive machines and are traveling faster than I could ever run. Faster than I could ever run from fear, from pain. Yet tonight, the jets’ solemn red lights flash a million miles away, becoming dots of paint dabbed onto the canvas along with the stars.
Freezing wind again punishes me for being outside so late, interrupting my thoughts once more. An autumn midnight is no time to be lying on a roof, but I do not mind. The breeze brings with it new leaves, taken far from their homes, and they replace old ones. The wind uncovers my memories of you which were buried underneath the crisp sea of orange and red and yellow. I often worry that my mental images of you will one day fade. That they will turn black with the sky, inhibiting me from seeing them every time I close my eyes. So I purposely, sometimes painfully remind myself, reteach myself, our moments. Our times.
Time is a funny thing really. What is it even? It’s not merely a clock or a watch. To me, it’s a cruel mechanism that drives on steadily, weather you want it to or not. It is the entity that separates us as humans from old words and memories. It is an unmerciful machine that relentlessly seizes days long past, and paints over them with the present. The unsatisfying, the unentertaining, the underappreciated present. Underappreciated, of course, until it becomes the past. Then it is missed and longed for, this is the irony of time.
Finally, a streak of silver fire is brushed gently, quickly across the canvas of blackness. For but a moment, my heart stops. No beating, no thumping. I am cold. I am alone. But I close my eyes. Tighter. Tighter. Millions of words overflow my head as I search for the right ones. I try to think of a wish, as we are all taught to do when such a rare scene graces us. I think for a long time. I think.
Sometimes, I’m afraid to think. I think too much and I spill my words, then I have a mess of phrases and sentences strung about on the floor. A mess of words that carry far too much meaning. Too much sadness.
Focus I tell myself. I sift through the wreckage in my mind and form the silent words of a desire, then slowly and gently open my eyes to see an odd color painted in front of me on the horizon, it fuses with the blackness. Orange. Daybreak. Morning. New colors seep over old ones gradually. A new painting starts, a new beauty is created before my weary eyes. However, that stops nothing. Days grow shorter. Time presses on. Memories still fade to the celestial heavens. Memories, I wish, I will never forget.