Red benches offer brief reprieves
along our path of golden leaves.

Remember when these trees were few
and we enjoyed a wider view
beyond the bridge beside the bay?

What was it that I meant to say?

Could you recall the night we kissed?
The time you sprained your tiny wrist
to watch the morning trains depart?

The year we spent pursuing art?

How we would dance, make strangers stare,
and carry on without a care?

That day you held a heart-shaped leaf
and beamed at me in disbelief?

Let's sit and reminisce some more.
I think that's what this bench is for:

a place to pause, embrace, and smile,
to lose ourselves a little while
inside the beauty of this life
where any husband or a wife
might count their blessings through the fall
and feel so grateful for it all.