summer to autumn

this is fiction.

the doorbell rings and i'm in the cellar, searching for a glass to store the mint that dried outside. summer is waning, and soon autumn will creep into the dried leaves; better find a container to store them before that.
crouched before an old locker, a bathroom locker put down for ever in a dark corner, and searching its innards in the vain hope of finding a forgotten preserving jar, the doorbell rings. and i know who has come.

cellar leaves a fine dirt under my socks, which i've never inspected though often imagined. i open the door and there she stands, sil, in all her very usual appearance. she greets, shying a moment of awkwardness away, and i react according.
"such a beautiful weather" and "everything is redecorated", she exclaims into an uneasy silence as we proceed to the living room. me, carrying a tray of tea, her, carrying a bag and a red sweater; we both tiptoe past the history that lingers behind our foreheads. sitting down into an uneasy situation, i busy myself with the tea.

"i had a dream; there was a rosary. someone must've lost it right there on the floor in front of my door. and i left it hanging on the knob, thinking the person might come back and find it there. the dream forwarded and i stood in the little shop on the corner, carrying a pot full of soup, and asked the guy wether this rosary - at which it dangles from my hand, unbelonging and completely out of place - by any chance belongs to his wife."

she never shared her dreams. once in high school, i remember, we had an argument about people telling their dreams. never, she said, would she share her dreams, for they are too personal to her and besides, they're so chaotic she doesn't understand them herself. so why tell them?
so why tell them. where does this come from; why now does she tell me her dream? i sip my tea, she sips hers, and a silence muffles everything around. like this we sit, each trying to appear deep in thought. the uneasy silence has found us, and my thoughts drift back to the dried mint, the preserving jar, the old bathroom locker in the basement. autumn has arrived, summer has ended.