PeonyMagazine

  Dear Autumn, You’re here again. The air changed overnight, and everyone started talking about sweaters and apples and how pretty the leaves are. People post pictures of orange trees and say how cozy everything feels. I remember when I thought the same thing. Lately, you make the house feel bigger, like the rooms are stretching out and I’m smaller inside them. Sometimes I wake up and the kitchen feels too quiet, like something is waiting for me to notice it. I do the things I always do: put the kettle on, sweep crumbs off the table, make the bed, but the motion doesn’t fill anything. It’s just motion. I used to like this time of year. I liked putting out the little pumpkins on the porch, lighting a candle that smells like cinnamon, saving jars of peach jam in the pantry. Those things made sense. Then something shifted. I don’t know when the shift started exactly. It was small at first: a phone call missed, a neighbor not stopping by anymore, the son coming home later each time unt...

  Special Issue • September 2025: Letters in Autumn (Part 1 of 4) Dear Autumn, Whenever you arrive with your soft breeze and golden skies, I feel a sense of calm. You remind me that life moves in seasons, that nothing stays the same forever. And maybe that is why I feel so close to you now, because my life as a mother feels like it has shifted into its own  autumn. I still remember the early years, when my children were small and everything felt like spring, new, fragile, and blooming all at once. Those mornings are noisy and full of life, like the first buds pushing through the soil. I remember the mess, shoes by the floor, toys scattered on the floor, lunchboxes that I tried to fill with love even when I was too tired to stand. I waited by the window in the afternoons, just to catch a glimpse of their faces running home to me. And at night, I sat beside them doing their homework, I barely understood, pretending I wasn’t just as exhausted as they were. It was chaos, but it wa...