With Every Solar Rotation

September leaves cascade, kaleidoscopically.
One year older, but according to the College Board not wiser.
Dad is not here, again, so I continue to pretend his absence doesn’t give me heartburn.

Spooky season.
A web of laughs and screams and joy and fear and the thrill of not having a curfew.
I pound back another shot of cheap tequila in Dan O’s guest house.
Someone drives us to the diner, our Glory Days.
Full bellies, sick at the thought of sugar—
Parceque tu me manques beaucoup.

Thanksgiving’s biting winds cut branches bare, like his words do me.
The rich scent of honeyed ham permeates
every single layer of self-doubt.

A first December snowfall blankets our sins,
and I’m thankful for a month where I can forget:
Joyeaux Noël, mon amour,
Cheers to the New Year,
and a collection of other What’s Apps that I still haven’t read.

A hung over and cotton-mouthed start to January,
where resolutions fall faster than the graupel snow.
Dad’s hot cocoa is no longer my favorite drink.

My heart thaws in time, with the birch trees, St. Valentine,
and the first message that reads I’m proud of you.
I sense the brink of Spring on the humidity-soaked skin of the boy I am with.
Beads of sweat cling to the static between us

as daisies push from the once cold ground,
emerging with April’s first golden days.
In May, I don’t know what’s worse: Finals week
or the looming reminder that dad is only there because he is bound
by the expectation that he must see me walk across a stage.

The June bells toll and mom’s wedding cake
tastes like summers in Baabdat.
Its pine forests are lush just like the Evergreens
that line all the back-country Greenwich roads.

Screeching feet on steaming courts echo
the way he used to speak to us.
Lips stained purple.
Fire-cracker pops dripping with guilt,
on hot-tempered July nights.

And then it’s September.
Dreams of him finally showing up.
Munching on fresh papaya—

sweet as the love he once gave me,
sweet as the sound of him coming home.