Parting Season

This is the season for giving up -- cold and
impersonal; rainwater slinking off the alley like some

anonymous drunk. Somebody invented the first broken
heart to match the color of rain. My grandfather used to tell

me that you would never really know,
wouldn't be able to pinpoint, the exact time

when you are let go by a person you love. Was it on that
specific moment when he was doing something as ordinary

as washing last night's dishes or staring at the green sock on his
left foot when he thought of you as something lost,

as if he received word that you have died yesterday in a collage
of car crashes, mounted secretly in his mind. Or was it

on that very second when he looked at you from across
your small, round dinner table as you said "Pass the green peas, please."

If you had decided to look long enough, you would've noticed
a decision in his glance,forming into a shape of an open door.

Tell me, should there be a number of times, a
repetitive quandry of events before one learns that

to let go is the best course; that it is best to get your body away
before this season ends and translates into sunnier, more forgiving days.

Then, it would be harder, would be inappropriate, even.
It would be as if everything lost rises, as if the world were a place

the people you used to love have never seen; and it was enough