North Wind on Westheimer
The first cold front reaches Houston the way good news always does here—sideways. Not a trumpet blast, just a nudge at the back of your neck as you leave the grocery store, the paper bags crisp as if they, too, have been waiting. All day the sky has been undecided; at dusk it suddenly remembers how to be October.
You don’t have a coat ready, because nobody in Houston keeps faith with autumn. A light sweater from the back of the chair is enough. The air smells cleaner, like it said sorry for August and meant it. Your phone buzzes with the same arguments, the same half-finished goodbyes, the same reminder that your life is a drawer you keep meaning to sort. You put the phone face down on the passenger seat and let the AC rest—tonight the city breathes for you.
On Westheimer, the traffic moves without its usual threat. Patio lights blink on, and for once they belong to the evening instead of fighting it. Somewhere, a taquería opens its windows and the limes believe in themselves again. A couple holds hands like they finally remembered the trick; a kid in a hoodie runs in loops while his father pretends not to time him.
You drive with the windows cracked, hands at ten and two like you promised after the last close call. The cross-breeze erases the day’s leftover heat from your wrists. Somewhere between Dunlavy and Shepherd you realize you’re not bracing anymore. The radio plays a song you swore you were done with. You hum anyway.
Your mess doesn’t clear—grief keeps its calendar, love keeps its ledger, and the bill won’t go away just because the Gulf let go of summer. But the air has edges again, and edges make room for corners, and corners make room for sitting with your back against something that holds. You park outside your place and hear, for the first time in months, the small noises of a neighborhood becoming itself: a screen door, a chair dragged across concrete, a laugh that doesn’t apologize.
You text no one. You make tea you won’t finish. You stand on the stoop and let the front wrap around your shoulders like a truth you can finally say without shivering: I am not fixed, but I am held. Somewhere a storm retires without fanfare. Somewhere mosquitoes file a complaint. Tonight the city gives you a coupon for mercy with no expiration date, and you tear it out carefully, fold it twice, and put it in your pocket for the hard drive home.
Tomorrow, the heat might swagger back. It always does. But tonight the wind came north, and for a few clean blocks, you remembered how to be someone who can open a window and let the world in without fear of drowning.
