“Around the color of September,” she told me, eyes glancing at the sky. A soft smile played on my lips, not wanting to reveal her mistake, yet thinking of how lovely and beautiful it is to think of time as shades of color, changing slowly and rapidly, fading and brightening as the months pass.

Kansas City, MO 2012

The truth is, I am longing for the color of September. I am looking towards the grayish, light blue horizon of a hazy and humid summer, longing for the piercing clear blue of an afternoon September sky. I am fragile and worn from the heat, a dark stain on my skin from too many months of desert sun and cloudless heavens. I am longing for the cleansing rain of Fall to wash my dust colored feet, to make raindrop patterns on the window, to blur the harshness of being transplanted and uprooted into a new home I haven’t quite grown into yet.

Buckner, MO 2011

Paint samples cover the scratched kitchen table, muted pastels and pale grays, but nothing resonates with my eyes used to the richness of life found in Ghana, or Morocco. These walls can’t contain such joy, can’t capture the freedom of rusty earth, of abandoned back alleys and red chimney rooftops.

Paris, France 2014

These photographs can’t capture the relics of love embroidered on my heart, don’t do justice to the glistening, smiling, eyes winking back at me from their one dimensional frames above my bed. The translucent wings shimmering from my window can’t take flight, can’t take me back to where I belong, if only for a moment.

I am held captive by idleness, forced to allow my weary heart to soak in the flavor of goodbye, to marinate in “fare thee well,” to wrap both hands around carefully penned letters from souls enmeshed with mine, to close my eyes and feel their breath whisper in my ear.

The lush greenery and heavy heat of mid July are incongruent with my cool, November heart. The geography is all wrong. I’m not in the right hemisphere. I’m anchored to a different season, a time of rest. I belong to shorter days and longer nights, curled up next to a blazing fire, warm cup of coffee to warm my trembling hands. I belong to skies as blue as my eyes, to thin mountain air and paths covered in dry, autumn leaves. I belong to quiet rolling hills and soft kisses on my cheek.

Morvan Park, France 2014

I look eagerly towards the sky, searching for the hues of change, anything to suggest this monochrome of uncertainty will pass, will give way to the regal radiance of last hurrahs, of crisp evening walks, boots clicking against moistened sidewalks, umbrellas left in the doorway. If the leaves fade, maybe too will the memories: boats drifting through water, waves crashing through my fingers, laughter filling my belly, smiling over my shoulder, leaning into the joy of summer.

Tulum, Mexico 2013

Maybe the color of September will bring a different kind of resignation, an ease to this separation, fragmentation of so many stories told by the patterns on our palms, silhouettes of leaves beneath our feet. If the rains come, maybe they will wash away this stubborn hope insisting my reality is elsewhere; my roots will not grow deep, cannot possibly thrive so far from where you stand, lungs full of wild molecules and waves of longing.

Essaouria, Morocco 2013