between the cracks

Extreme weather patterns aside, the first days and weeks of Autumn in Melbourne bring a particular joy to the city.

The light drops its summer glare and sinks into a lazy state.

People smile and sniff the air that holds auburn and musk and ground coffee and coats and hours spent reading a book or remembering that bakery where your mum used to buy you Neenish tarts after school on a Friday afternoon.

Summer was for the brilliant and those who can bash their way through.

Winter approaches and it is blue fingers, heads down and black, so much black.

Spring holds promise but it is jittery and precarious and makes you itch.

Autumn encourages

lolling

lingering

lazing.

It is cheeky. It flirts warm and cool.

It smells like hope.