Ardain Isma
CSMS Magazine
By mid-November, the Florida air changes its tune. The humidity loosens its grip, and a gentler coolness begins to sweep across the land, carrying with it the faint perfume of pine needles and fallen leaves. The afternoons shorten, the sunsets deepen, and a soft hush descends on the evenings, as though the world itself is preparing for reflection.
Colette feels this shift more keenly than most. Autumn has always been the season that stirs her memory, tugging open the door to a chapter of her life she has tried, with varying success, to close. Nights like these—quiet, tempered with the mellow gold of fading daylight—pull her backward to a time when love seemed certain and the future was something she could touch with both hands.
Five years ago, she and Jean-Robert believed their days were stitched together by fate. They walked along wooded trails, tracing their dreams into the bark of a pine tree that stood like a sentinel over their affection. Their laughter rose easily, ringing between the branches like chimes. Love, then, felt lush and uncomplicated—holistic, pure, and full of color, like autumn’s first blush.
But seasons, in their wisdom, remind us that nothing stays unchanged.
It was a December evening—still warm enough for light jackets, cool enough for breath to linger in the air—when Colette’s world quietly unraveled. The neighborhood children were rehearsing Christmas carols, their voices floating through the street like tiny bells. Houses glowed with festive lights. And there, in the shadow of the same pine tree that bore their carved initials, Jean-Robert told her he was leaving.
Not for a new dream.
Not for a new horizon.
But for Susie.
Susie, whose parents lived in a world of gated communities and beachfront vacations. Susie, whose affection came dressed in comfort, convenience, and security. Colette remembered the way Jean-Robert couldn’t quite meet her eyes that night, how he kept glancing toward the road as if the truth might escape him if he let it stay too long.
It wasn’t the betrayal that hollowed her—it was the swiftness with which he abandoned what they had built. One moment, her life felt bound to his; the next, she was alone beneath the whispering pines, listening to carolers sing Silent Night while her heart fractured quietly in her chest.
Years passed. The ache softened, though it never vanished entirely. Colette built a life marked by resilience and quiet dignity. She taught literature, poured her energy into her students, let her days be shaped by purpose rather than longing. Yet, some nights—especially those brushed with autumn’s tenderness—she still heard echoes.
A laugh carried by the wind.
A faint memory rising from the scent of pine.
A whisper of what might have been.
But this year feels different. Standing outside beneath a sky just beginning to darken, she senses a shift within herself. The memory no longer stings the way it once did. The ache has mellowed into something gentler—an understanding, perhaps, that some loves enter our lives simply to teach us how deeply we are capable of feeling.
Later, she walks to the old pine tree. The initials they once carved have nearly disappeared, swallowed by time and new growth. She touches the bark, marveling at how the tree has continued upward, unbothered by old wounds. Maybe healing looks like that—not erasing the past, but outgrowing its shadow.
Colette breathes in, slow and steady. The night is cool. The wind sighs through the branches. And for the first time in years, she feels the season as it is, not as it once was.
Autumn remembers.
But it also releases.
And tonight, Colette does too.
Note: Ardain Isma is a university professor, novelist, essayist, and scholar. He serves as Chief Editor of CSMS Magazine and leads Village Care Publishing, an indie press dedicated to multicultural and social-justice-oriented literature. His works include Midnight at Noon, Bittersweet Memories of Last Spring, Last Spring was Bittersweet and The Cry of a Lone Bird – his latest novel which explores resilience, love, and the enduring quest for human dignity.
