It isn’t until
years later
that I allow
Fridays to be
rest days

Child size chairs line the halls
too small for your frame
you sink to the floor
your knees between your legs.

Always late,
his habit of washing hands
poking spots, plucking brows
took over clock watching
the second hand unnoticed
until the time to go
came and gone.

Two inches thick
it penetrates
nostrils, eyelashes,
sandwich lunches
and settles over
mismatched IKEA furniture
like a rough winter coat
a month before spring.

I put the X on the anniversary of your last day but it seems wrong to sully it. It makes it seem so final. The day speeds by as I bake to fill freezers and counter spaces. I start with Valentine Orange Cookies in misshapen cupids, heads snapping easily off into crumbles.

Paths to the bin
are zig-zagged with your
relatives and your
arial trapezee stunts done at
supersonic speed
through the space between noses and
rails of backyard fences

Our parents direct us towards the
5-minutes-in your-mouth-and-their-gone
variety but we move slack jawed
past ping pong, golf and tennis ball sizes
to the granddaddy of them all.