It's like comparing apples and peaches.

It's Fall, guys.

I'd done my ritual,

and I'd officially accepted it.

Coat, socks, rain.

Everything.

But last night at Sprouts,

there was a big ugly empty spot

where the yellow peaches

were supposed to be.

Genevieve asked them to check.

And the handsome clerk came back and said,

"I'm sorry.

That was the last of them."

It felt like a sentence of death.

I got tears in my eyes.

I don't know what my deal is.

This is the twenty-third time

that this earth has shed summer

and put on autumn

since I got here.

But this time I'm taking it hard.

There's beauty to it, of course.

I feel like I can see God

in the snow on the mountaintops,

in the inexorable change of the seasons.

And even though they didn't have peaches,

Sprouts had pallets and pallets

of honeycrisp apples.

On sale.

When I got home,

I hugged my bag of apples

and smelled them

and cried again.