They talk about tomorrow with the certainty  
of seasons, a faith so transparent my hands  
 
pass through it, as if traversing a curtain of water,  
when I reach toward their fallen masks. 
 
We come here every October when winds 
blow on late afternoon sunlight ladled 
 
into patches around the square, and the trees,  
near to buckling, have begun shedding days  
 
and months, leaves the crackle of bone, echo  
of breath. In my children´s wake, the regret  
 
I thought I had swallowed in fragments  
while lingering over precautions, little half-truths  
 
and too many maybe next years scarred all down 
my throat. Mommy, look! they say, breathless,  
 
and I slip on last year´s face, the one that urged  
them to bask in earth´s wild bounties,  
 
no second thoughts or worst-case scenarios.  
Fear still crouched in shadows, waiting. 
  
They used to do this with friends, think 
a chatter of squirrels clambering for the largest 
 
acorns, which they´d paint at school the next day. 
Today they are alone. In a few minutes, 
 
hand gel will blur all traces of play. 
On the way home, their pockets will sag 
 
for want of treasures left behind. 
How they shuffle colors out of all this gray, 
 
read the future in the tarot of the wind  
is beyond my comprehension. But what if  
 
they´re wrong? If what they see is a wisp 
of the past, ghost children with faces 
 
much like their own, come to taunt them  
with scenes from a life no longer theirs?