THE MEMORY OF THE COMMUTE

In days past
Unlike the no longer here
my daily commute 
was aboard a most reassuring wind
The kind that blew kisses to sailboats
And made sheer curtains perform
a secret summertime striptease.
I would make my way past a battalion of trees
Dressed in their army greens
Who quietly sacrificed their
Lives to defend my right to sadness
And passed a playground
Whose memories to this day
I continue to plagiarize and rewrite
in order to tell the story of my mom
Who always smelled like the exhale of roses
And hemorrhaged from her thorns
And my dad
Who discovered early on
That despite his outsized fears
It was the little things in life
That brought him comfort
like the cordiality of chestnuts
And the succulence of peaches
slurped over a sink.
The wind carried me faithfully
Right on schedule
Right on time. For years. For always.
Past incidences
and landmarks
And towering monuments of regret.
Until now.
For despite its infallibility
The wind has forsaken me
And left me here in quarantine
Where the only thing that’s left to soothe me
Like chestnuts and peaches
Is the memory of the commute.