My Autumn

You loved to climb the maple,

We called it your tree,

We had been so willing

To give you everything,

As if we knew,

All along,

The seasons were changing.

.

I sit among the branches this morning,

Trying to conjure your spirit

From the rustle of the leaves,

Watching as the sunrise illuminates them—

Blood red,

But sparkling, iridescent,

With frost.

.

I try to listen for your laughter,

My daughter,

my Autumn,

Beyond the silence of sunrise,

Behind the cloying skitter

Of a squirrel’s feet on bark,

Frantic to prepare,

Desperate not to lose

The bounty this summer brought.

.

My breath is shallow,

Staccato puffs made rainbow,

Fragmenting the sunlight.

.

Beauty,

Even as I am here,

Chest tight,

Throat raw,

Carved hollow,

Aching.

.

I try to find the sound of your voice,

To grant me permission—

Let me become a goose,

Southern bound.

.

“Take me with you,”

I whisper as they fly overhead;

My words

Fracture the air,

Too sharp.

.

I imagine myself falling into

Their perfect formation.

.

You do not speak.

You never speak.

But the leaves around me shake

As I drop my head into my hands.

.

It is then that I hear it—

A tinkling,

A crunching,

The fracturing of the ice

So delicately encasing

Each blade of grass.

.

He stands with a thermos of coffee in one hand,

My hat in the other.

.

His feet are buried in the leaves

We hadn’t been bothered to rake,

Clinging to him,

Drawing him in.

You always were a daddy’s girl.

.

He opens the thermos, and the smell of warmth—

Hazelnut,

Cream—

Fills the crisp air.

I can no longer smell the decay.

.

I cannot drink it—

This offer of love.

.

I pour the coffee over my frozen fingers,

Watch it thaw the earth,

Steaming.

.

A deer wanders along the edge of the yard,

Uninterested in us,

In our loss.

.

She is worried only for her own winter,

Concerned for her own children,

While I worry for everything that came

From the death of my Autumn.