3

autumn eventually took to sleeping in my bed with me, her skinny frame fisted up tight and hard against my side or the small of my back. sometimes i would wake up at her sighing, as if she were a million years old, worn out and sore, and even sleeping exhausted her. i would look over at her face, her features just barely visible, a muffled configuration of curves and concavities under the whitewash of the late-night moon and lamp light and see that

her forehead never completely smoothed. i would slide my hand across the sheet to touch her, run my fingertips over the furrows wishing i could draw her anxiety out through them, silently and desperately pleading with her mind to unknot, to please god let her rest,

she would sigh, her body a contracted jumble of angular joints and pale taut skin, her red hair framing and curtaining the lines of her skull, bleeding out across the linen. nearly every night this happened, i would reach out in the dark to touch her, hoping my presence would at last after so many failures be a comfort, wait for the tension to melt off like frost from a window, for her to clear,

nothing changed. my hands were small and powerless against her separation, every offering i made fell short in the face of the impenetrable barricade of her being.

i remind myself of this as the temperature drops and the branches begin to show, when i always demand of myself an explanation as to how i could not save her. i recall her as she slept, pressed into me, clenched into herself, and say we both did all that we were able.

and every year the leaves fall, and i wonder.