6 One-Paragraph Stories About Autumn That Will Make You Cry Pumpkin Spice Tears
You have a cup of coffee in one hand, and with the other you browse each stall and shop for the perfect products to make your dinner tonight.
1. You’re walking through an open-air market with a canvas bag and a big pair of sunglasses (because it’s chilly, but still very sunny). You have a cup of coffee in one hand, and with the other you browse each stall and shop for the perfect products to make your dinner tonight. You pick up a loaf of bread here, a few vegetables there, and linger over the jugs of fresh-made cider while a couple of red-gold leaves blow around your feet. Off in the distance, there are a couple of kids laughing as they help their mother pick out a pumpkin to carve, and you make a mental note to wander over later and get one for yourself.
2. You’re sitting in your apartment, on your freshly cleaned sheets, with pumpkin candles burning, and an old book that’s new to you in your hands. It’s just warm enough that you can leave the window open, and as you read, a breeze of crisp air flows through, and pushes the pages
forward. You’re wearing warm socks and a big sweater, and you’re waiting for something to be done in the oven, something you’ve made for someone to come share with you — that someone with whom you’d like to analogize your relationship to blooming like spring, but you know it’s more accurately that you’re settling into each other’s warmth you embrace this change, just like you do autumn.
3. You’re walking briskly down the streets of your city, barely noticing the people and buildings that surround you (as always), when you catch a window out of the corner of your eye that makes you stop. You look around and, as if waking from a deep sleep, suddenly realize just how incredibly beautiful cities become in the fall. Everything that feels dirty, even exhausting in the long summer months has been transformed into something beautiful. For just a minute, your city again feels like the magical place it was when you arrived.
4. You’re in that perfect part of your city, where trees line the streets and so do your favorite shops, and as you’re walking in and out and through, one hand is holding your coffee, the other someone you love very much. You’re wearing your old sweater and new scarf, and your boots crunch the leaves as you walk, leaves which, of course, are already a myriad of warm, beautiful hues. You go into a cafe with the person whose hand you’re holding, and you sit down at a window table to have brunch. There’s a school bus driving past, and you’re reminded of what fall used to mean to you.
5. You are sitting all the way in the back of your favorite cafe, drinking a hot cocoa that has just one or two little rivers of chocolate running down the side of the mug, pushed upwards by the weight of the whipped cream heaped on top. You briefly look up from your book to peek outside at the rain falling against the golden leaves, and you remember suddenly that you forgot your umbrella. “Oh well,” you think, “I’ll just have to order another hot chocolate.”
6. You took a personal day that morning, and went to biggest park within walking distance from where you live. You bunched your scarf up like a pillow and laid on it, in the middle of the grass. You spend the next hour watching the sky, with leaves twirling down toward you, coming into your line of vision, and then being whisked off to the side by the wind. You kept your hands in your pockets, and when you took them out, you realized you were still holding the letter. You knew it was important when you got it, but handwritten things always seem more salient in the fall. 