Fall Season

My father said goodnight

and walked into rainfall, wind shears

rattling our windows, scrubbing clean

his seventy-year-old face.

And his children were stuffed in plastic bins

indiscernible from junk mail

he was afraid to throw out.

I was an adult mourning

his golden years

because it did not include me:

the last of a kind

wandering plains

flowering since childhood.

To have watched them celebrate

and become so cold:

I had been unaware

our memories were stamped

and sent to different carriers.

Love remaining in what

they will not say.

How abandoned are the busy roads

and the burnt metal

tangled like ivy.

I wanted to dig up a picture book and point,

but like a legal arrangement,

was afraid they would tell me

the contract had been fulfilled.

Lonely is the window

that catches dust

and not sun:

I listened to their happiness,

ice clicking against glass:

I was last season's leaf,

how unceremonious

for me to show up again.