September, are you already here, tearing open the heavy blanket of winter with your impatient green hands? The cold is bleeding out, a tired gray dampness lifting from the earth, and we are left naked, standing at the door of a month that is a secret whispered inside a closed mouth.

There is an anguish in the blooming, yes, but it is a delicate anguish—like a ripe fruit splitting open on the kitchen counter, offering its sticky flesh to the ants. September, you are a profound silence that demands to be heard. You are the exact moment the first stubborn bud decides it is tired of waiting and lets the sun do its quiet, terrifying work. In that awakening, there is a strange, wild freedom.

I want to touch the mystery of your mornings. The mist is a wet veil over the face of the world, blinding us just enough so we can finally see what is inside ourselves. It hurts to be so exposed, doesn’t it? To have the rough edges of our daily panic smoothed down by something so impossibly soft.

And then there is love. Not a loud love, but a pulsing thing, like a heart beating behind a closed door in an empty apartment. It is the breeze shaking the new leaves until they tremble. It is the sudden, unbearable realization of another human hand touching yours in the dark. Why does it terrify us so much to simply be? September, force us to open our ribs. Make us bleed love if we have to, let it spill out onto the pavement like water from a broken glass, careless and absolute.

Welcome. I surrender to your sudden, terrifying light. Stay until we remember how to breathe without fear.

© Beatriz Esmer