Apricot Press

The grass was yellow-dead that year. I remember.
Teething straw-like at our hard, dry heels. We cut
through a stranger’s backyard to reach our field.
The witch-burning pyre. Dry as Death. Yesterday
I’d made forts in the leaves
with friends. Little unknowing creature
playing in the red-orange dandruff
of the maples. Now the others were gone and
I remained alone
among the black sheep bones, kindling for
some sacrificial ritual I had never
been privy to.
I thought it was as game
at first.
Their deliberate silence. The peeling back
of branches to peer at me over the shoulder of the fence.
The adults had left us to our own devices. The trees
were dawning their smoked apple tailcoats. From behind me
a match-strike like breaking a tooth. Down the street
the doldrums of the season began to toll
and I know. We all know.
It is Autumn
again.

Photo credit: Lukasz Szmigiel