As Time Wills

Dusty couches that had been broken in for years,

but impart familiarity when you lay upon their worn

comfort, echoes of my deceased mother's lasagna

which would never cut it on a restaurant table,

but sated something deeper than the tongue.

Thick fog that rolled over meek grassy hills,

transforming them into monsters when sheep

with unkempt fur were all they withheld. Day's

when grass takes the appearance of thorns,

birdsongs no less the screeching of coyotes.

She invited me into her home, and there I saw

my father who'd died of a stroke, the perpetual

sob bubbling in the sclera of his eyes after his

wife had gone for good. He smiled with a grimace,

and pointed me towards the least wobbly chair.

The wooden walls had been imbedded with

bread that had been baked thousands of times.

Candles of which had merged into a novel

incense no one could ever replicate. Pans

that carried years of dinners in the crusted edges.

I could feel all that he'd lost through his sorrowful

kindness. I looked at who'd later become my fiancé,

and knew her future wails through the dad that I had

buried. I know the dreary music of a house all alone,

and how it feels to have once been alive.

***

Brandon Shane is an alum of California State University, Long Beach, where he majored in English. He's currently pursuing an MFA while working as a substitute teacher and writing instructor. You can see work in Acropolis Journal, Bitterleaf Books, Salmon Creek Journal, BarBar Literary Magazine, Discretionary Love, various Wingless Dreamer anthologies, among others.