Little Somethings

I want the autumn days that turn into autumn evenings
and I want us to skip straight over winter and
right to spring,
taking a brief detour into summer before popping back into autumn.
I want slightly cold breezes so you can lend me your scarf,
I want to protest that you’ll be cold and be silenced with a kiss, and a squeeze of my hand to let me know you’ll be just fine.

Sometimes I think about that sun-soaked apartment with the park view,
the trees swaying gently in the wind, visible from the big windows.
We’ll be invited out for brunch and then I’ll catch a glimpse of you,
putting on that maroon sweater with that tiny v-shape by the neck,
take it off you immediately,
and we’ll blame traffic for why we’re late,
and don’t mind our disheveled hair, it’s windy
and they won’t mind.

I do wish I could skip the winters –
it’s still warm out (sometimes too warm),
humidity soaking into our bones, making us feel heavy with the thickness of it all,
so I’m getting ahead of myself
again.
But autumn was when I almost said I loved you,
and the winter was when I lost you –
by spring I’d believed I’d forgotten you,
and now it’s summer and it seems that I’ve finished pretending that little somethings are only little somethings.
Maybe the small moments sit with us longer than the big ones,
like the way your eyes would sparkle,
the slight curve at the side of your mouth when you struggled not to burst out laughing,
when we whispered sweet things and imagined one day we’d go dancing.

I want the autumn days that turn into autumn evenings,
those moments when I’d walk along the lake and pretend you were with me,
as though I’d look up and see you looking right back,
as though I’d hear the leaves crunching under two pairs of boots instead of one.
I don’t want the winters, silenced with snow and sun hidden,
so cold that even my thoughts can’t keep me warm.