A.S. Thorne

The *ber months arrive like a reckoning.
September drags us into the shift. October sets the bones on fire. November strips them bare. By December, the world has gone quiet enough to hear your own ghosts.

This is why fall has always been my season. It’s the one time of year the world stops pretending. Summer is all flash and bloom, a performance of life at its loudest. But fall—fall tells the truth.

Leaves don’t simply change; they ignite. They burn out in colors too beautiful to last, and then they fall, silent as ash. Branches twist back into themselves, naked against the sky. The air sharpens, thinner, hungrier, and you can feel the edge of winter closing in.

There’s a strange kind of reverence in that decay. A raw honesty in the way nature refuses to apologize for ending. It doesn’t cling. It doesn’t bargain. It lets itself collapse and trusts that in the ruin, something new will root.

I think that’s why fall feels like home to me. It’s a reminder that unraveling isn’t failure—it’s survival. That burning down doesn’t mean you’re gone—it means you’re clearing space. That endings, as violent and messy as they are, make way for beginnings.

The *ber months are not gentle, but they are merciful. They give us permission to lose our grip. To shed. To grieve. To let go of what can’t come with us.

And maybe, when the thaw comes, we’ll rise again.

But for now—
let the world burn quiet.
Let the ashes fall.
Let yourself begin again.

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💭 Your Turn

As the world burns itself down in color and collapses into quiet, ask yourself:
What am I ready to let die this season?
A habit. A wound. A version of myself that no longer fits.
Write it down. Name it. And then—like the trees—let it fall.

🖤 A.S. Thorne