It’s November Again by Talin Tahajian

It's November Again
Talin Tahajian

This time last year, I was so lonely. Sometimes, that’s just
how it has to be. Sometimes, I just want to cover myself
in tiny electric blankets & cry forever. It’s November again
& I’m ready to cry. Each year, something different. Nothing
will ever be like the night I went to get coffee across a park
covered in late-October frost & missed death by an inch
or a centimeter. It makes no difference no matter how
you count it. I am filled with hot coffee & so much smoke
that most of the time, it’s hard to see clearly. It fills my eyes
& my whole heart. A piece of flesh the size of a some small
animal. Some thoughts I’ve had recently: the brightest
thing in the world. The moon on Halloween. The kind of meat
we eat after everyone else has gone to sleep. Like everybody
else, I want to die someday but not anytime soon. I like dusk
just as much as anyone but I think I’m becoming more keen
on sunlight, waking up to the sweet & coffee of the kitchen
& all those birds. There are plastic spikes on my windowsill
to keep the pigeons away & I don’t know what to think
about that. Things like that fill my whole entire animal heart
just like the smoke & coffee. Thin heat from the radiator
in the library. Frosty fields where I almost died & died again
until I forgot what it means to die or stay alive. It’s November
again & most of us are still alive. This makes me so glad except
for the fact that it has to be said. I look outside & a black flock
of birds erupts into something that’s never been described before.