The wind breathes the air of a thousand cypresses into my lungs, and it does not stop. The sea pursues my each inhale–the sand and rust of the ocean miles away. The horizon chases pine roots, the stars reaching for the moon. I do not exhale.

This breath is crisper than the coldest winter. Freezing, I walk, desolate of any by my side. How cold could an autumn night be, to silence a snowy spring? The wind bites in a way that the snow never dared. It whips every fragment, every surface. A breeze stings and slices my cheek open. The wind is more merciless than January.

The skies wash over, darker than denim, before dinner. I eat under midnight, dining with Orion and Jupiter. Above, my building must be a speck to the atmosphere, and I become less than dust by this evening and not the night. By morning, the crows will peck at what dirt I’ve become.

I journey back, an ant to the hill, and the honey in my water brings some sort of joy. I imagine warmth in the way my hands wrap around the cup, how my body caves to be closer to the center, in the way my eyes still reach against the rest of me for the sky. A mirage appears in the gleam of my green coat, in the yellow light that peaks through dozing windows, in the blues of the clouds that never pass by. The leaves whisper their goodnights, and I am left alone with the swish of my skirts and the thumps of my tread. Still, like the ants, I bustle and weave amongst the others–still, like them, the colony never sleeps. Our footsteps are more numerous than the stars that dot the sky, but I am left alone to remember any past the moon.

And at the stairs to a rusted door, on the stones that start to cave when history starts to weigh, I turn in as well. I bid my farewells to the brightest in the sky, to the cherry blossoms outside the laundry room, to the steam out of the chimney, and to the windows about to close their eyes. I bid goodbye to the dusty scent of the wash, the crisp air that cuts, the whispers dawdling in the common room. I bid goodbye to the green of my coat and the dyes that color the sky and reenter the weathered carpet and patterned wood. 

For the rest of the setting sun and rising moon, I stay an ant, moving boulders across and carrying messages. In the brown of the wood and the grey of the earth, I remain between beige walls, blinking at the eyes of my screens as my blinds begin to settle as well. I am a part of the muttering now, away from the sky and her stars and cypresses’ wind, rumbling under the evening as the gentle earth does.

It is only when I’m finally ready to rest at midnight when the lights are closed and the ceiling is an imitation of the night, that air does not cut anymore. It is an hour past when the windows have closed and the room has grown warm and dull, and it doesn’t hurt to be in an autumn that never passes spring. 

My lungs expand until they cannot but burst, and I feel myself floating in a high that leaves me no room to come down. At my peak, I imagine laying on the flat of the Earth, below the tips of the cypresses or the pines. The constellations are above me, as they always should be. But I cannot find the stars from above the sky; I cannot come down until the wind leaves this night, and the moon carries her goddess down.

And as I exhale, cigarettes creep in and fill the hole in my lungs. The second-hand smoke tugs and pulls at the taste in my mouth, through layers of filters of fabric and time. This polluted winter, this grayed melting snow and deep charcoal that clings to the clouds, leaves a metallic tang on my tongue. A car honks in the street and suddenly the whole road is a recital; the vendors sing and cajole, taking turns as if rehearsed. The cut on my cheek healed by the time I wasn’t granted, but the cracks in my heart were fixed by the damage I couldn't keep in my lungs. 

Just as I take another breath, the sky turns into the orange that never leaves the horizon. Hazy, the yellow and red neons blur together, the blue shining on top of buildings, signs flickering in the distance. Somewhere over a few blocks, fireworks shoot up into the sky. The buildings take over the trees, and the moon hides where the pollution can’t follow, the stars already dazed behind the clouds. The air is filled with the smoke of the haziest winters and the shortest spring. And because I dare not be the monkey that disturbs this well where the moon does not shine, I bid goodbye to the city, and I breathe in the smog to fall asleep.