September has begun without making noise. One day you wake and the air is no longer the same: it smells of leaves, of a freshly sharpened pencil, of the start of the school year.
I haven’t been to school in many years, but the body remembers. September sets me in motion, asks for order, gives me back the urge to write things down in a new diary.
This year I want September to be gentle. Not a shove, but an invitation. To return to my own things without gritting my teeth, with the sweetness with which you enter water that is still cold.
I promise myself little, in a low voice. To walk more. To listen better. To let the afternoons shorten without protest, because that is also their way of ripening.
The days already feel shorter. Night arrives sooner, and I like that folding-in of things, coming home with the light on.
September doesn’t ask me to have it all clear. It only asks me to begin. And I, slowly, have begun.