There was only one direction autumn could go from here, summoned by its gigantic electromagnet. I too was drawn by electromagnets, the ones in tight skirts and knee-high boots. I trailed behind, levitating ever so slightly off the sidewalk, tongue fluttering in an unseemly way, until the electromagnet ducked into a scarf boutique and I found myself facing a herd of uninteresting snowflakes. It may be true each snowflake is unique, but only in the microscope’s roseate lens. On Seventh Avenue they mass as uniformly as soldiers. I was as unique as a drift grayed by bus fumes, as ephemeral as a snowflake. Meanwhile the massing cavalry wreaked havoc on my exposed proclivities. They flickered in the brittle air, those first bold signifiers of winter. I lamented their brief, inconsequential arrival, just as I lamented autumn’s protracted departure. Contentment raised my suspicions. I could think only of what had been abandoned and what lay up ahead, always moving, never static.