1944 (winter to come)

Leaves fell like days. He came no more as he would come never more and what seemed so alive just a few weeks before, was over. It felt like falling, like Fall, like the inexorable end not ended. And all to be seen was brown, used as summer uses fruit not picked. Still I came. And still I sat. And still I looked down the sidewalk for what I knew would never come. Just me and a rumble of regret that made coffee bitter among a mock of voices neither known nor wanted.

There would be a service at the church on the other end of main street. Words would be spoken among gray hair and black leather and ears would receive what minds could not hear. She would be there. I would see her. And again I would feel an anger in my stomach, the kind mother’s feel in survivorship, of divine visitation absent, of a home neither warm of hearth nor heart. We would have this silent bond as we would suffer, alone. I suppose if there ever was a point I wanted nothing more of life, it was here, awash cold stone under the cool light of winter to come. This was not home. But then again, neither was any place.