Autumn Leaves & Pumpkins Please

twenty-two | it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

october 3rd

A U T U M N

THE CITY OF DALLAS WAS PERFECTLY COVERED IN WHITE CARPETS. Roofs of houses, entire streets and even my neighbor's dogs were wrapped in snow which made everything look like a present – no one remembered what those things looked like without a layer. Snowflakes whirled their way down the sky, landing on various types of things. Needless to say, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Withal, the citizens of Dallas adored Christmas – who doesn't? – and couldn't wait to decorate everything. At night, the whole city was lit by red and green Christmas lights and there was a huge pine tree in the middle of the center.

I stared out of the window, observing people who passed my apartment. Two men were holding hands as they walked closely to each other to preserve warmth during the cold winter times. I smiled at the happy couple and noticed a lonely man behind them who clearly was jealous of the two. That was me. That man was me, how relatable. It reminded me of the dream I had last night, although that was the last thing I wanted to think about. In my dream, Xavier visited my apartment and he was coated in a thick layer of the white goodness, so I helped him warm up by giving him new clothes and a blanket. When he was all good, we decorated my apartment as Last Christmas played in the background. We danced, drank wine, decorated some more, cuddled and so on.

I hadn't seen Xavier since the first of November and it was quite devastating. When I was by myself, he would be in my mind in synch with a biting feeling of utter guilt. It was unlike me to leave him in that fucking hospital while he was ill and needed a lot of support to keep going. Instead of being something like a good friend, I listened to his stupid words and traveled back to the States. Then there also was the coming book of his in which he told the reader about how he felt about me all that time – and there was nothing I could do.

Because if I'd return like autumn, he'd fall every time.

X A V I E R

I walked through the lonely corridors of the oncology department, actually, I strolled. That bloody room of mine killed all my well-functioning blood cells – not literally, though, but the feeling was comparable. Then every morning of December the nurses would awake their victims with a live-sung Christmas song, usually Last Christmas, because that's the only Christmas song I liked. Candice, my nurse, told me I once sung it during my sleep. I wanted to hang myself.

Suddenly, a door flew open right in my face and hit my nose, causing me to cuss quietly.

            "'Scuse me, mate," someone said.

            "No need to worry, I wanted a nose surgery anyway," I mumbled.

They laughed and appeared in my view. It was a man of my age with a lighter skin than mine and a nice smile. He wasn't bald yet, the chap possessed a head full of blonde hairs neatly combed to the back. His dark eyebrows gave him this womanizer look, weirdly intimidating which girls seemed to prefer over a softer look.

            "You wouldn't need one, Montgomery. Girls admire your nose," he said.

            "Oh, stop it."

We both laughed and I looked at my watch.

            "So what would a lonely man be doing at four in the morning?"

            "Could ask you the same," he said.

The man was quite clever and delivered an excellent first impression. He was someone who had the capacity of understanding my jokes, possibly even coming up with similar ones. The last time I felt a click the second I met someone was back in secondary school when I was an innocent boy. Those were the fucking days.