Saudade She stepped off the porchbroken porch with beehive in the pine tree that grew until

it engulfed the entire railand followed the hive to Africa. Marie was a keeper of bees, and they would come to keep her as well. Her arrival occurred in the middle of one football seasonand her departure followed next. She was golden, gold haired, gold blooded, and on golden bees she went. She dressed in colors of the Earth. She was draped in hues of pale blue and beige browns, you are what you wear, and she wore the planted Mango trees, gardens, roaming critters and sands. Her feet had been in a different time zone by the time we met. She would go on to count her seasons by rain fallen, and crops gathered, while I would countdown by the snaps, quarters, and halves. Football season was my favorite season. Its the shortest season, time sped up by the punctuation Saturday can leave on each week. Amongst a wave of white and green, I watched Michigan State down by one to Ohio State with 7:07 to go on the game clock. The story of the the exposed skin of the sweaty crowd could be told by the sun, as it was still high for a midSeptember late afternoon. I stood in the stands among my peers with cold steel pressing me upright behind my thighs. The student section was magnified, to say the least, compared to where I had sat before. The size of everything compared to the higher sections was the grand difference between reality and interpretation. Football time is longer than real life time because every moment is sprinkled with a commercial and some change. Suspense builds, the narrative unfolds towards reality, and loss is ultimately felt. Maries brevity made her like fallshort months, a burst, and then a quick retreat. She was sweaters in the sun, would visit weekly, and she too became a punctuation. Although the day was deceptively warm, autumn was on its way out, and the weeks would soon blend together as one, days inseparable from one another. After this game I would go home, effectively cementing the days events into reality. Leaving behind any notion of last chances, per manence would reign once again, everything swallowed in a final poof. When I met Marie, we cheersed and the bottoms of the glass shattered. When she left, I had a football ticket. Everything felt drenched in inevitability. It was so hang up your hats, go home, shows over. Dont let the door hit you on the way out . This moment would break and one point could be the difference. It was hopeless, like begging autumn to stay; I was lost in woods, asking trees Will you take back the leaves you let fall? The seconds would tick down, one outcome after the next; Michigan State would lose by one. They would not beat Ohio State that year. Marie would not return next weekend, or the one after that. The bees would keep her and she will grow with mango trees, and her gardens.

My perpetual day continues. The letters on my wall will close a gap; they will fill moments longer than those I have experienced. Letters are omens as much as they are signs of hope, and because hindsight is better than foresight, I allow them to be a reminder of what is, and was, because I dont know what will be. But because hindsight is better than foresight, all I would know at the end of that moment, of 7:00 and some change was that falland its potpourri of leaveswould no longer be punctuated by the snaps of a ball, but Marie and her return.