Resemblance.

Fall has never felt new to Avery. It arrives every year dressed differently, and he recognizes it before he understands why: a certain yellow, the brown underneath it, light going flatter in the afternoon. And suddenly he is also on Maley Road, in Georgia, watching his stepmother mark the season.

An essay about resemblance, the word more generous than sameness. How memory keeps what it likes, by color and texture. The versions of a self lined up like a police lineup, and why all of them were him, in different light. Elias at a fire, moving a log that did not need moving, and loving him for getting up anyway. The scone that is ruined by too much care. The leaf that was not dishonest when it was green; it simply had not reached October. Places and people and books that do not save us but keep us company. And the next Avery, who he hopes resembles this one, keeps the good parts, and leaves the rest in the field, where things decompose and something else grows.

Then, what came back. On Sunday the house asked what beautiful thing you still protect from being rewritten. The first answer arrived within the hour, from a reader almost seventy: five years old at a screen door, a soft southern rain, the metal smell of the screen, arms out wide. Read with her permission.

The question stays open: write to avery@averylanemaxwell.com and say how you would like it held. Nothing becomes part of Galena House without permission.

From the kitchen: the scones, folded twice. averylanemaxwell.com/kitchen

From the house:
· Saturday 10 October, 4 to 7 pm: the Dillon Wellness Collective's Welcome Gathering, with a silent auction. Avery's lot is a private reading in the winner's own front room.
· Thursday 22 October, 6 to 7:30 pm: Avery reads from Still, by Design. at the Collective, then a conversation about place and recovery, questions and signing. Free.

This episode is also a film. Watch it on YouTube or at averylanemaxwell.com/podcast.

Keep the lamp on: the house is kept by the people who listen to it. Twenty patrons at ten dollars a month keep the room. The Patron Circle is at averylanemaxwell.com.

⌂ Every episode, and the films: averylanemaxwell.com/podcast · the letters: averylanemaxwell.com/letters · the kitchen: averylanemaxwell.com/kitchen

♫ The Galena House playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/55wkYr82P02Tsr4zgKZubw

A note from the house: this is a personal podcast. Avery tells these stories as he remembers and understands them, from his own life and perspective. When other people wander into them, he protects what belongs to them.