Autumn Falls to Winter

The leaves have left,
The pageant is over.

The distant sun shines no more
But glows, amber like wine.

The air’s chill is ever-present,
It walks beside and all through.

Autumn has fallen,
And winter, victorious,
Tiptoes in on soft white specks.

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Candlepower

Candlepower- intensity expressed in candles Time passes differently in this reading room, I think to myself. Minutes turn into hours like the wax of the candle turns from a solid into a liquid, running quickly together and building up. I barely noticed when the sunset, and am only just now aware that I had lit the candle at all, let alone that it was my sole source of illumination. I lean over it carefully to blow out the flame that sits on a short nub of wax. Two things happen in that instant. The light in the room blinks out, of course, as the flame is extinguished. Also, as I stand there in the dark with my face above the candle, the last tendrils of smoke drift upward and into my nostrils. Instantly, decades of birthdays flash through my mind, a blur. I’m a child, standing up on a chair at the kitchen table, eyeing the cake my mom has decorated to look like a clown. I’ve just blown out the candles and everyone around the table- all family- is clapping. I’m slightly older, this time...

Oktoberfest

A pasture with cows, unending acres of corn, a small town in the distance. They were familiar to me, a different arrangement of the sights I knew from my home town. As I looked out the window I could almost convince myself that I was driving down Route 102. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was technically farther from home than I’d ever been. I was in Germany, on a train between Memmingen and Augsburg. It was just past seven in the evening when Maggie, Alex and I arrived in Augsburg. Back in Barcelona, we commented, the sun would still be an hour away from setting. Here, though, we stepped out of the train station into the last few minutes of sunlight. It was getting colder, too, which only increased the strange-yet-familiar sensation we’d had ever since we’d arrive in Germany. We looked at maps and tram schedules and compared them to the directions to the hostel. The signs held the unlikely and, in some cases, impossible combinations of letters and sym...

365 and I Didn´t Waste A One

Originally I was going to write a humble, what-I’ve-learned sort of review of 2010’s major events for me. That’s kind of my thing, anyway. But then I started listing what’s happened this year and I decided to throw the humility crap out the window. I’ll just say it: this year was awesome. I’d be doing it a disservice if I tried to play it down. 1. U of I- My second semester of U of I was filled with interesting classes, new friends, and a lot of fun. My classes were varied and I learned so much that I still carry with me. (I can have a basic conversation in French, I can draw and label a cross section of a brain- to a certain extent, I learned about force and momentum and electromagnetism and a bunch of other things I’d never have learned about in an English class.) I got all A’s and made the Dean’s List again. I spent a lot of time applying, writing, and interviewing for the study abroad program that allowed me to be in Barcelona right now. I survived Un...

Drink Life to the Lees

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