Autumn tastes like midnight blackouts
when you don’t know how or when to navigate

the waters between history and future. You’re stuck
in the palms of the present as you pick scabs

off trees like chipped paint. The waters swallow
you whole into its charcoal wasteland, charcoal

because life’s shedding its last layer of flesh
before packing leather suitcases for a sleep-induced hiatus;

And you’re lost because you don’t remember
why your Ma left the door unlocked before fleeing,

why your Ma’s last mahogany footprints
led to a pile of crippled leaves and ended the trail—

You laughed at the way they were shaped
like bones, cracked infinitely like a porcelain doll dropped.

But you know that you began with a midnight blackout
as your parents kissed until their bones were numbed

by too much silence in one measure, you know that
their oxygen tasted like expired sesame oil with…