September Morning

Her window was open - that's why she caught it. The scraps of summer had begun to blow away, but she had not closed the windows yet. On this morning she sat at her desk in her little office, half listening to the familiar sounds of her husband's morning kitchen routine below, and found a slow smile relaxing her face and releasing something - something that had been waiting, unknown, unseen. The scent of wood smoke wafted through her window. The pellet stove was on. He must have turned up the thermostat. Salt of beach air on summer nights past. Comfort of the cotton sweatshirts slightly gritty with the sand, scratching against sun-tendered skin. But also the promise of early evenings and of candles lit in the dusky winter. Both the summer and the winter rode into her office, carried on that smell. She knew that there would be another sputtering blast of summer heat before she could settle into the damp and cool of her home in the rain forest - before the pellets would heat the house every day - but on that September morning, she woke again. The air carried the scent of her heart.