English Breakfast

It’s as if, suddenly, weather,
and the memory that it’s always like this
once the leaves jaundice
and the evenings are no longer the nightmares
of a slow-cooker.
Tonight, it will rain til dawn and the leaves will soften,
the air nearly as cold as the nearby tundra,
and my British grandma will make stew
at four in the morning.
Inevitably,
it will burn
and I will rise to the alarm
of a fire truck pulling up to the house
and embarrassing the house’s blood.
I will sleep in a delirium that night
with nightmares of October fires
and rehydrated leaves turning to tea
in the gutter and think,
“how fitting of the tannins, to be here,
in the sudden weather.”