Life Lately: Autumn 2024

It’s October, which has always been my favorite month of the year. It is the time of in-between. The trees bloom with color, the air turns crisp, apples and pumpkins fill the grocery store aisles, Halloween decorations line the streets, and the world seems aglow with a blend of mischief and celebration. It’s one last farewell to the first part of the year and the preparation for hibernation and turning inward.

It is a perfect time for reading and writing, which is why I am back on this blog *waves, if you’re reading* after a four-year hiatus. Why pick back up now?

I guess because it seems as good a time as any.

So much life has happened in the past four years, as life does. A lot of traveling, moving, job changes, pain, loss, divorce, death, depression, mistakes, reviving, rediscovering, uncovering…and ultimately, falling in love.

It has been a journey and within that journey, my writing fell to the deep recesses of my mind as it felt too painful to put pen to paper for that time. I was too lost in the well of unbearable human emotion that I fell victim to it. Feeling that sort of darkness for a while kind of makes one go a bit mad. For many months I felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a bog, staring up through dark water to the surface.

I kept up with daily poetry, but that was more so for creative release, like a little hit of a drug, to keep me going than anything of professional magnitude.

But now there has been enough wallowing and tears and cleansing of the old self and old life that getting back to what makes me me feels right.

So that is what I am doing and hope to keep up this blog more consistently with the usual: recipes, travel/life/writing updates.

This autumn has been beautiful, and I hope it is for you, too. For me it has been a lot of baking, reading, watching scary movies, long neighborhood walks, hikes through the forest, kitty cuddles, home renovations, and planning for next year. (I’m currently reading The Crimson Crown by Heather Walter and Into the Woods by John Yorke—if you’re interested.)

For now, I will leave you with a shred of something I wrote this past summer. And forthcoming, I hope to have another short story published to share soon.

XOXO

Jessica

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Talking to Trees

By Jessica Malen

Late afternoon walks
in the low-slung light
are little drops of gold

I can see my shadow mingle
with the dead leaves
as autumn embraces
my neighborhood
in deep belly breaths
of October
washing the lawns
back into the earth

This time will soon
be marked by children
with skeleton faces
ringing doorbells to beg for sweets

I was one of them a long time ago
now I just crave
the chemical bubbles of
Diet Coke
which I can’t drink
because everything gives us cancer

So I take these walks
and let them carry me through seasons
until one day
I’ll, too,
be washed back into the earth

---

August

By Jessica Malen

The trees still cling to the soft petals of summer on this grey evening. I stare into the darkness of my dining room, with only the gentle glow of the microwave to light a corner, where a cat eats. It is nine minutes until midnight and I cannot sleep.

As I walked my dark and quiet neighborhood, I could feel the edge of autumn. The temperature was unseasonably cool and the sky threatened rain that never came, but if a picture had been taken it would have shown only: deep greens of Jurassic hostas, hydrangeas in full bloom fed by what could only be the humidity of the Great Lakes, and trees so tall and ancient, their canopies the flags of a year hard-won.

My year has also been hard-won and I am still coming down.

Now I lay on the ratty green couch surrounded by Marcellus and Beatrix as they clean each other to sleep, the sounds of their tongues the only in the house beyond the fan coming from the bedroom where my fiancé sleeps.

I slipped into bed beside him for a moment, the glow of his computer lighting up his still-open green eyes.

“You’re awake?” I asked before he flipped over, turning his back to me. I laced my arms through his and kissed the exposed skin of his back. He is beautiful and strong, and I love how he feels warm and smooth beneath my lips.

In the glow of the computer screen, his tan from days in the sun transformed into a perfect alabaster. Suddenly, his giant body curled around his device, was that of an ornate statue. Perhaps one perched over a tomb. I kiss that patch of skin as I would lay beneath that statue and let the grass swallow me under, just so I could be near for eternity.

I had hoped my statue would wrap himself around me in return, and we’d soothe each other to sleep like the cats in the living room. But he did not because statues cannot move nor can they love.

Knowing better, I dialed the knob on my fan.

I felt the blast of spun air for a while, and stared at the moonlight on the ceiling.

My statue fell back asleep.

After a while he woke to the glare of his computer. He placed it on the floor with some grumbling, before flopping back over and placing a pillow between us.

His skin was no longer alabaster, and he no longer a statue.

He was now only a man, exhausted from an evening with a restless, erratic woman.

Still, the pillow he placed between us may have well been a slap on the face. Though it’s just as well, because it chased me out to the large expanse of dark living room. Here I now lay beneath the window, staring up into the Japanese maples, knowing it is still summer.

And in the morning it will still be summer.

And he and I will make coffee and make love and walk beneath the still-green leaves.

It is this time I want to live inside.

One where I can lay down inside cold summer grass and a tall white statue guards me while I finally sleep.