“Hello Autumn” program

Hello autumn!
Announce the Facebook profiles, painted in cinnamon-brown hues.
Hello autumn!
“Snowing” with maple leaves—posts fluttering often right in front of your eyes.
Magazine headlines.
TV commercials.
Hello autumn!

In my mind, autumn apples bump around, sturdy-stemmed porcini mushrooms stand tall, and the round pumpkin heads from Grandma’s garden smile.
Hello autumn!

From the kitchen drifts the scent of cinnamon apple pie—a must-have, it seems, for this season to fully arrive with all its cozy force.
Hello autumn!

The little thermometer pressed to my forehead flashes like a furious red eye.
As if this autumn greeting alone weren’t enough—
to reinforce the effect, a salvo of coughs joins in.

“Well, hello there,” I answer in my thoughts.
“I welcome you as guests,” these “joys,” as if I had been longing for them in my life.

Though I’m already running barefoot across the meadows of near memories,
back when little Vasarytė ran wild and the whole autumn trio disappeared without a trace from the lakeside splashes:
Mr. Sniffles with his cough and Miss Temperature.

And now, as if from nowhere, they stand before my eyes again, waving with laughter:
HELLO AUTUMN, they bridge with a mischievous grin.

Shiny eyes, red noses, scratchy throats—they are plotting their naughty little “troika” plan.

We don’t give in.
We make a counterplan:
More hugs.
Extra snuggles.
A little more time together.
A pinch more gentle words:

“Oh, my little patient,” Pa whispers into her tiny brother’s ear last night, settled into my bed, pressing her nose close and lulling him to sleep with soft caresses.

They both sink into dreams.
I watch, sitting nearby.
And I know that these extra hugs and snuggles may provoke a counter-counter plan.
And it will be “pull back the reins—start all over again.”

But.
I stay quiet.
Knowing that a complicated, long night swirls right before my eyes.
I don’t hurry to move My to her crib.
I don’t want to interrupt Pa’s continued dream adventures by transferring her to her room.

I stroke the sleeping pair.
And drink in the warmth that radiates from them.

“Hello Autumn,” I smile.
With all your advantages and shortcomings.
And my heart is filled with completeness.

Don’t miss it,
And if it happens—
find in this Hello Autumn program
a little fragment of goodness.

Mua,
V.