I wear the seasons, in more ways than one.

I dress myself in a clouded disposition, mask my melancholy in smiles as if I were an azure sky on a cold day. I even flaunt wounds that make the brightest of maples envious. It's all harmless poetry, which sounds like an oxymoron if you know how dangerous words can be.

Then, I get worried when I realize how similar I am to these things around me; it's like burnout is to the mind what autumn is to the earth. Although I know the scientific explanation for why we get sick as the weather gets colder, I also imagine it is because most of us need a fever to knock us off our feet before we stop and take a break.

I wish I had seasons, don't you? I wish I could predict when the good days were almost up and when the collapse was about to come, so that I could at least prepare. In this one instance, nature is lucky. It has a way of forecasting its demise, whereas us humans have to endure all these spontaneous disasters on our own. For now, I have to settle with wearing maroons and mustard yellows to hide amongst the leaves. I guess we'll have to tolerate, or eventually enjoy, the descent to the concrete, all crumpled and worn (a word with two iterations a considerable distance apart).