Woolly Lines

As the leaves change and fall, the protagonist of this story considers how the thread of time and the thread between seasons fray.

BY: TANYA NG CHEONG

Photo courtesy of Cute & Cozy Crochet

I arrived at the tail’s end of summer, when the line between summer and autumn turned woolly. Even though it was the end of the summer, it burned. It was dry and prickly. I was beyond excited to experience autumn, though I suppose I should say fall.

Where I’m from, there are no seasons. Or rather, there is only one. The year stretches as an eternal summer, heavy and humid. Home is all air conditioned insides and sweaty outsides. Shirts that stick to your back as you walk the streets in sandals. Chills down your wet spine when you enter the mall.

As the seasons fought to take over each other, I spent most of my time preparing for the cold. I learnt what merino was. Somehow snuggling into my own sweater paws. I purchased my new favourite sweater: it was sage green with a pumpkin on it, but the pumpkin was shapeless enough to be mistaken for an orange. It was a fancy crocheted find, but it was mine and I intended to keep it for a long time.

Fall came, and as the leaves fell, so did my hair. At first, it was barely noticeable: girls are made fun of for shedding anyway. There was always hair on my floor. I curled my hair once, and that’s when I realised. I saw just how much hair I was losing in a single day. My straight hair accumulated on the floor from the rest of the week, but then there were the wavy strands. I’d left a trail everywhere, as if I had unrolled a reel of yarn around the house.

The dermatologist said it could be one of three things: anaemia, thyroid, or stress. I did blood tests, looking away as the syringe pierced my skin. The one thing I hate more than needles is blood. The first two options were ruled out when the results came in.

When I asked my new friends how they de-stressed, the one who was also my roommate said she walked her dog in the park. I had no dog, but parks were plentiful. I strolled through parks, keeping an eye out for the autumnal magic the poems had promised to me.

All the poets had written about fall. John Keats called it the season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness,” Percy Bysshe Shelley described flying autumnal leaves as “ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,” and Rainer Maria Rilke saw it as a time “when the wild leaves loosen.” What was there even left to say about it? Once a breeze blew right as I walked under a tree. Its trunk was far from me, but its branches towered over me, throwing me in darkness. At that exact moment, its yellow leaves all fell, dancing around me, bathing me in gold and light. The moment gave me thirty seconds of wonder. I spent the rest of the evening sullen because I couldn’t call anything a “golden shower” without sounding like a pervert. Fall was sabotaging my poetry.

Still, I couldn’t dislike the fall. I liked the look of it, the mosaic of warm colours when I went out. I liked how it was mostly chilly, but never prickly. I liked the sounds of the leaves, the spooky music. Sometimes, leaves looked crunchy but were disappointingly mushy. I fantasized about becoming a worm, or worm food; either worked.

My face and hands were always dry. My lips cracked. But that wasn’t the worst. Fall was still relatively pleasant. What would happen in the winter?

Back home, time was counted in events. Two Christmases ago, I was home, already thinking about university applications. Here, it's in seasons. Five winters ago, my roommate’s dog died by the fireplace. She told this story every time we drank too much, tearing up at the part where she recalled how she hadn’t realized what was happening. How the pet held on to its favourite toy: a grinning pumpkin chew toy.

That night, the alcohol had won again. We had no fireplace but the heater was on at just the right temperature for our blankets to feel cozy. They felt like a choice instead of a necessity. Maybe I should embrace the clichés. Maybe I would change with the seasons. I stroked my roommate’s back, praying she didn’t throw up. We were warm, and we were together, and soon she would be laughing again. I don’t like pumpkin spice, so I lit a “firewood” candle, and I thought the next seasons might not be so bad after all.