October

I could feel October coming

toward me like a train

like a brindled hound

I feel October’s tiredness

settling like crows in my bones

October comes around to hurt

my best friend died one October, long ago

a child, she was, and for love she died

that kind that hangs

on like a terrier and becomes unlove

and then highway lines and glass and goodbye to all that came before

more recently, October

hung, drew and quartered me.

October

makes me want to run,

to disappear

into an amber forest with the deer

slip into a foreign river and hide with the slow, upstream-gasping trout

October, and I want to kick loose the four walls around a feathered heart

to blow out the roof of the soul on fire

and fly away

from details and details and details

from the too-blunt shaver and the strangled ideals

and the blame

and the loss

and the judgement

and the shedding of people and place

and the four hours of brown tiles of a bathroom floor