At the top of the stairs, there is a window. Outside, in the evening, tree limbs black on a blue-black sky. I climb the stairs in the dim light from the kitchen, watching the window, watching the trees. He follows, flicks on the hall light, and the window becomes a mirror.
All of October was like this, momentarily beautiful and then lost, all that time at my desk, at my computer, in a lecture hall without windows at all. The fall has been microbiology, all the bacteria that breach your cells, the viruses that drift into your lungs, proteins that lock and unfold and allow the lipid membrane to part. The parasites. The trematodes that pair off in a dark turn of your gut, curl around each other, and mate for life– there with your fluid washing around them and your blood vessels branching in the walls.
And your heartbeat in a chamber somewhere above, speeding up a little as you ascend the stairs and turn toward the bedroom.