When you roiled into this world,

Folded envelope-tight until

You unfurled, your silhouette was etched

against the hospital window’s

crisp white sunshine, the beginning of

the first heat of a Tennessee spring.

Clutching you against my breast that

Entire southern summer,

Us both a Pollack of

Sweat and tears and milk.

We learned to be humans as the

June thunderstorms broiled in the horizon.

Years followed, a blur of

Staccatoed speech, latent laughter,

A zigzagged row of teeth and then

Fumbled steps before you trained

Your tongue into words I think

Finally came from that ineffable

Chasm cleaving each person’s chest.

The year tips over, always,

As we know the sun will slide

Into the gullet of night.

I knew that beginning you

Meant there’s an end somewhere.

But the autumn is short in our country,

A sliver of time tucked against

Humid dusks and a too-soon night.

You have zipped your own coat,

The neighborhood children wait on the sidewalk.

You do look back for a second before

Jogging to their side.

What organ did they never remove that still clings to you?

I feel it flare, roil, unfurl, as your silhouetted figure turns blurry in the autumnal glaze of October.

I knew when I began you that someday you would be you, unclenched from me.

You come home, but still, I know.

You come home, and I wipe a small dust

Of frost from your coat,

From the brim of your hat.

You blink back a flake of melting snow

Before saying that you love me

In a way that lets me know

You are no longer me,

And this is good, this is how we

Move to the end.