Autumn Is a Time Like Honey
By Matthew Lee
Autumn is the season that follows summer and leads to winter. Autumn is a fallen leaf, a lover’s kiss, a kite lost to the wind. For a boy in a candy store autumn is a time like honey.
Autumn filled the store with golden rays, melting melancholy into syrup, dripping over crevices of the familiar, all to become memory forever. Pouring over bulbous heads and drooping limbs and plastic smiles. Above the red and white and black of jellies, liquorice, gums.
The store owner watched the boy from behind the counter. In his hand he held a bottle of Revia. That hand wore four rings, none of them his wedding ring. That was in his right pocket. He would only check that it was still there when he returned home. What would he do if it wasn't? He would divorce his wife. It would be a silent affair. They had no children.
The boy spent a long time deciding what to buy. He eventually decided on a sherbet and a coke. The bulbous head approved this decision. It was wearing a small top hat.
The boy walked to the counter and gave the store owner ten dollars. Three dollars change. A sherbet and a coke.
The boy went out to the street. The sidewalks on the verge of melting. He looked back towards the store. The store owner was still watching him. The bulbous head with the top hat was still watching him. They were bathed in the honey of autumn rays.
That moment was forever locked in the amber of time. It was not filled with any feeling. Not fear, not anxiety, not malice. Merely sensual, dripping with the honey of autumn, glazed in the candy store windows. This was autumn for the boy. Autumn was a time like honey.
The store owner was waiting for the boy to leave so that he could take Revia. When he returned home his wife divorced him. It was a silent affair. They had no children. This was autumn for the store owner. Autumn was death and despair and loneliness and Revia, Revia, Revia.
THE END
Author Bio: Matthew Lee is a postgraduate student living in Melbourne, Australia. He has published short stories and poems in the Farrago Magazine of the University of Melbourne.