Endings.

Another Halloween come and gone. The one day I wait for all year, the day when the world makes sense to me and looks like somewhere I'd feel at home, over and done with, and in its place, suddenly winter. It feels that way, at least. This is when my year ends, spring forward and fall back and you can't catch yourself to keep from falling, one hour sooner into darker nights. Pull down the strings of orange lights, put the skeletons back in your closet; the world is winding clockwork down.

Near my work, the little convenience store and its strange tiny food court where I've had so many lunches the past few months is gone now. The coffee stand in it had closed the week before, and today I found the rest of it shut and fenced off.

I suppose it doesn't matter:

I won't have a job after this Friday anyway.

I can't be too surprised, or even that upset -- the political campaign my employer was building a site for doesn't want to keep paying for development after election day, which makes sense. It's been fun, the money's been good (although I haven't saved enough of it), and I finally have more recent webdev experience, so it shouldn't be that hard to get another job. I hope not, at least.

Tomorrow, I hope -- and I hope this so fervently my stomach is in knots -- something else will be ending: four years of terrifying misrule. I wish I were sure how this would turn out. Every time I let myself hope for something better, I can't help but feel that rush of dread. Spring forward, fall back.

The world is ending around me. But the world ends all the time, and there will be another one in a minute.

I know this. Sitting out in the cold the other night, conspiratorially close, watching the shadow of the world steal the moon from the sky with my windbourne, I knew the moon would come back.

And it did, brighter than anything, its midnight light filling the courtyard outside with white like a blanket of snow on the ground as we made our way to bed.