The Outcome

Autumn has shed its skin

to winter's dark embrace again;

oblivious to the seasonal myopathy,

I contemplate her absence stretched to perpetuity.

The Philadelphia evenings fester

as daylight drains to ebony.

Boathouse Row shimmers like endless Christmas

reflecting damp off the Schuylkill, absorbed by the sick of me.

I stagger down Bainbridge, numb

to South Street's Saturday revelry.

Their faces enraptured, so happy in the moment

and so utterly alien to all I'll ever be.

I feel the outcome, as certain as yesterday's rage,

as grim as an undertaker gone to seed.

I inhabit the outcome and then simply wait.

To go.

To be gone.

Really, really gone.

Daddy-o.

Freed.