Standing here under the porch of my apartment building gives me perspective. Perspective is a luxury, at least for someone like me. I once wore my heart on my sleeve. I dove into passionate love affairs with the summer breeze, fell helplessly for a whiff of the ground as the rains first drops fell upon it, and stared like a child at snowflakes so beautifully trickling down my window. I dated the seasons. They taught me everything I know about the world. I learned of love, hate, humility, power, lies, weakness, dependence, struggle, victory, lust, loss, and respect.

Summer was radiant. Her smile would light up the room. She always made me feel warm and comfortable. We drove for miles together, summer and I. She seemed to never tire of the road and miles of dusty pavement that I called home. She submitted to my adventure. She made it hers. She shined on me enlightening my path ahead. The balmy breeze of summer’s nights drew us closer. She whispered in my ear and drove me to redefine the lines of pleasure and pain. Summers rays were not all perfect though; they burned me with deceit and the doubt. Summers lilting song that once cradled me to sleep grew slowly softer, fading away under the sound of the ocean.

Then came monsoon. Her overcast, dark clouds seemed a fitting backdrop to my then broken spirit. It was comforting hiding in her darkness. It was there that we found each other. Between the pages of books, deep within paragraphs, the lines of our souls connected. Words were like thunder and their meaning like lightning struck us both simultaneously. Our unison invited the rain and we were never afraid to get wet. Stolen kisses and love letters, our attempts to hide away from the world made for a fascinating storybook romance. Here’s the thing about storybook romances and dark clouds, they serve well to hide the harsh truth. Monsoon was unfaithful; yet she loved me with a passion worth immortalizing in words.

Unknowingly, I had hit the refresh button. My emotional canvas was now blank, devoid of the beautiful strokes that once called it their home. My eyes now longed for a sign that things would get better, but more importantly, for a sign that things would change. I slowly leaned against the bark of a tree and just as I was about to drift into slumber she came to me. In the shape of a bright yellow leaf, she fell gently on my shoulder. In her quiet, inconspicuous manner the touch was reassuring. In the days we spent together she surrounded me with her varying hues and I like a painter began using them to color my canvas. She offered me art, literature, dance and somewhere between it all, hope.

Autumn captivated me for she was never stationary. In her comforting amber lay our dreams and aspirations. Her pink captured the moments when she’d taken my breath away. The deep red strokes distinguished on my canvas, told of the wistful love we made; raw, unforgiving and unstoppable. While autumn exposed worlds far beyond my realm of thought, she was slowly dwindling away in my world. The leaf that once brought her to me was now surrounded by million others who’d taken her away.

Guarded: Walls built higher and stronger than they had ever been. Isolated from the rise and fall of the heartbeat of subsistence. Away: locked inside rooms built with the fragments of my fractured soul. Winter came to me through the windows. Sometimes I feel as if she was within me all along. She was the most exquisite site that ever graced my eyes. As her snowflakes fell upon the glass I was in awe of the crystal patterns that defined her soul. It was beyond doubt that each figure was carved by loss, pain and a longing for completeness. I smiled and wondered how she could be so strong and so fragile synchronously.

Winter lashed against me in sheets of harsh wind and snow, over and over again. When I turned to shield myself from her she found ways to touch me in places I hadn’t ever been before. She was harsh, cold and unsubmitting. Still, I was drawn by her fervor. There was something savage about her. Being with her seemed like a treacherous trek under icicles that threatened my sheer existence. I was vulnerable and exposed. Although she could have blocked my path at any given juncture; she allowed me, sometimes even guided me through the narrow crevices leading to her core.

I had journeyed from the child I was sitting in that room many months before. Still for a moment, I gazed at the same window at winter’s snowflakes. I realized then, that the sharp ice that formed the beautiful crystals was her. And I was nothing but the gaps in the middle; just as complex, stunning and horribly incomplete without the framework she provided.

For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.