Parkinson's Disease: Autumn

by Andrès Cerpa When I woke for school the next day the sky was uniform & less than     infinite with the confusion of autumn & my father as he became distant with disease the way a boy falls beneath the ice,    before the men that cannot save him- the cold like a forever on his lips. Soon, he was never up before us & we'd jump on the bed,    wake up, wake up, & my sister's hair was still in curls then, & my favorite photograph still     hung: my father's back to us, leading a bicycle uphill. At the top, the roads vanish & turn- the leaves leant yellow in a frozen sprint of light, & there, the forward    motion. The nights I laid in the crutch of my parents' doorway & dreamt awake,  listened like a field of snow, I heard no answer. Then sleepless slept in my own arms beneath    the window to the teacher's blank & lull- Mrs. Belmont's lesson on Eden that year. Autumn: dusk:  my bicycle beside me in the withered & yet-to-be leaves, & my eyes closed fast beneath the mystery of migration, the flock's     rippled wake: