Fall Leaves
Fall is leaving —
is the waving flurry of a thousand goodbyes,
their deciduous mortality decided long ago,
a long downpour in endless succession,
like the energy of life has packed up to find a new home.
Fall is leaving,
is that label, “homeless.”
I should have known she’d be gone too soon,
had I only known how to read
her face, imprinted in my mind,
but my illiterate hands wrote no note of goodbye.
I thought “I’m leaving” was a sappy try
for extra treats, a threat to punish my consequence.
The girl who asked if I knew how to do up her hair,
who fought hard, but fought harder to check her temper,
who wrung every ounce of effort to catch up in a system
that had left her three years behind by grade four,
until with the changing of seasons
she was uprooted once again —
I didn’t believe her.
Fall is the text: “I’ll miss you,”
because there was no way she could stay,
all of us cracking, wondering who’s next to slip away,
where attrition rates drive reality day by day
(and not just for those of us from TFA),
waiting for the burst that will bring us down.
Our students aren’t the only ones who don’t stay in schools.
The whoosh chirps from the phone
with sardonic indifference,
her message —
her visit —
a long hug goodbye —
and then the silence — stillness — severance — gone.
Fall is leaving,
is energy draining with each lined leaf
like verdance dwindling to brittle brown
on bare branch bones,
every cell and organelle spent
in service of the insentient whole.
Fall is the bruise I missed,
a deluge of color on vibrant brown,
a nightmare that keeps me awake in wake
of my own finite limitations
of brain space, time, response formation,
with this howl to the wind of how
I could ever
have let it
brush
right
past.
Fall is the handshake, the handshake, the handshake,
just grasping each morning,
just trying to hold on.
That one special handshake,
detained after school —
can detention bring retention?
Can documented intervention?
And who decides if staying late means
punishment or prize?
Fall is the chill force of endless demands
blowing all four conflicting directions
the compass spins mad
a dizzying drill
rolling the worst out in her me him you
the shrill whistle never ceasing
shaking out streams of cold lifeless numbers
as if we could track and count and model the data
of falling leaves blustering in the wind
until the sheer exhaustion of counting would make them
fly up in the face of the force of gravity until they should somehow
fall no more.
Fall is the hardness that draws me away
as his ten-year-old voice falls to whisper: “Please stay.”