sleep past the summer

And the weather changed so suddenly she thought she must’ve been dreaming, that she’d fallen asleep in the dead of summer and woken up on this first day of autumn—the leaves seemed to change before her eyes, the air was clean and clear, and she swore there were a hundred more stars in the sky. So the days went by, and she started to forget there ever was anything other than grey skies and hot chocolate and warm hearths and rain. And she hoped—as she did each year—that this time, spring would forget to come and summer would never wake up and it would only be autumn for the rest of her life.