Autumn

A day of errands, paperwork, bits and pieces, and then I met Barbara Diamond, a labor lawyer who makes short documentary films about micro-aggressions, race, bias, gender, and the careless ways people of privilege inflict harm. She’s working on a film about class. I was shocked when I looked at my phone and saw that over two hours had passed. 

Leaving her, I scuffed my feet through fallen leaves and suddenly I was caught in a vortex. I was three years old in my grandparents’ yard in North Carolina; I was ten years old, walking along 229th Street to P.S. 156 in Laurelton, Long Island; I was fifteen in Warner Robins, Georgia; I was thirty in New Orleans; I was forty-four in western Massachusetts. Here is the crackle and crunch of the dry leaves, the sharp, unforgettable smell of the dust of summer, the clench in the heart of oncoming winter.