The last I saw Dad I didn’t know it was the last.
Buildings in San Francisco are on roads like hills like mountains
and the roads at home are just, roads.
Mom’s commute
the MTA off-schedule
scheduling for check-ups
for chemo
for follow-ups to the check-ups,
blood drawn.
Mom draws families like trees.
Branches fall in winter and no one minds.
Dad’s branch fell in August, and the hills
that were like roads
fell too,
fell flat,
and dull,
and took tears to the gutter.
Where he pretended to sew the scattered ashes:
that man from Georgia, who knew the
Mom from Georgia,
Soon
She and I, one two,
became
three
became
six
became
—wait.
Siblings or
not siblings or
not blood but
some love.
And as alone
so together.
Like branches in winter,
like lines on roads that
drift past the rows of houses
which stand above cornfields
and blow like leaves
in the summer
and fall in winter
the next branch fell
in May.
When he crossed
the lines in the road,
no hills but
six became
three became
two one, just
Me.
and mom.
Two branches that never fell.
Two branches evergreen.
Like check-ups
or trains,
on schedule,
on time.
But time doesn’t wait.
and the clock is just running
until
the next branch
falls.
And no new seeds are dropping
And these branches won’t regrow.
Will Leggat is a high school senior from Brooklyn, New York. He attends Phillips Academy Andover, where he is the editor-in-chief of his school’s literary magazine, The Courant, and a Prose Reader for The Adroit Journal. When he’s not writing, editing, or riding the Q Train, he’s drinking a bit too much coffee.