To the Child I Never Had

There you are again, hollering just for the company of the echo. There you are wearing my genes, bucktoothed, nearsighted & hollow-eyed from insomnia, the family curse. I know you, long-distance runner, apostate, follower of game trails. I see already your ruin, inevitable as oxygen. I hear the birds who never spoke to me calling to you by name, as if the world could possibly miss one more neurotic primate lover. The bindweed sheds its leaves & turns to gold filagree in the lilac, above the graves of the strangers whose whiskey bottles I have placed, green & purple, in the windows to catch the winter sun.