Fall II

Leaves are keys on a chain
round the neck
of an old hardware store clerk.
He puts his white hands
in the pocket of his apron
and holds them together,
generating heat
out of the old
skinned claws. He thinks of the
blood within his veins, the sight of it
holding like ribbons
in the water of his bathroom sink.
Oh God, what was that?

These leaf keys
sell
for cheap, they
fall off
like hair off of the dead,

they form haunting faces
on the wet bricks. The faces look
like the clerk’s sons, his
brother
who drowned in a quarry,
and they mirror his very
DNA
like stairs.

How
flesh grows across a person’s face,

how organs flash brilliantly
like blades for that brief lifetime
and then dull,

how children’s futures are
stored in the attic.