Summer was something to survive
this year, autumn a rusting finish line,
I revel in October because it reminds me
of letting you go, the way I
breathe more freely the second
I stop reaching for you.
I’ve sworn all my life I’d rather be
taken advantage of for
my gentleness than remain
cold and unbruised, and
you very nearly changed
my mind, took a sweet boy
and made him afraid to want,
but gentleness returns like
autumn air, all at once,
just one morning arrived.
To leave a lover,
it’s quite conscious,
first hell and then habit,
soon stranger than a stranger,
a song you once knew, a
joint aching only in
warning of wild weather.
I haven’t found a way to
tell those stories, so bleak
in the light, so I
drop them as punchlines,
and laughter makes
the monsters shrink,
watch them skitter away
amidst the browning veins
of what trees once clung onto.
michael king 