November
Then comes November. With a crack
I find my lips chapped in her dry air;
the bottom one spits a drop of blood
toward my chin. It burns from my skins own salt.
The top sits slack against my teeth. November.
But she brings kindness in proportion
to the rot. You know where to find it:
the leaves paint themselves gold and cherry,
lit by the sun like paper lanterns
from Japan. They even line a path to
the convenience store, its tubes of chapstick.
And when a creamy gray sky,
those same leaves cut with the fore edge of a knife,
shimmering serrated teeth.
The month is good to me at first
but gets bitter as she ages. I can always
feel it coming: the air suddenly brisk
bites the tops of ears, freezes wet hair.
November knows her leaves are turning
muddy and withering—like any pretty face
maladjusting to the change, refusing it,
finally lets herself waste away. Good riddance.
She does this every year; the month
goes straight to Hell by the end,
tired of putting a waxy coat on
brittle stems in preservation,
leaves me with three-quarters bare trees
and brown dead grass. Good riddance.
She’s left me twenty-one times before—
Well, here’s to twenty-one more, Miss!
Soon, I’ll learn where she goes when she leaves,
and November First will come and I
won’t be waiting. I hope that I’ll age
with more poise than November, and she’ll make a ritual
mourning me, reenacting our time together,
joining me, in December, underground.