October

by Jasmine Lunia

I was October,

a shot of something unidentifiable

rushing through butterfly veins,

lust for knowledge, running from something

I didn’t understand, greed for more, then it

slipped out of my hands-

or perhaps I threw it off the balcony;

at least I cared, the same two gold rings,

beakers left unshattered, finally a home,

tartaric acid, scribbles on notebooks,

my future laid out in the numbers of a spreadsheet,

the bus’s shattered mirror.

I despised uncertainty before yet now it

brings comfort, love and rage,

the promise that someday

September will come again.