If it were autumn the leaves would in their butterfly dance belly up as they hit the grass and become reservoir for rain or dew or black boots that ask you about your father: your sweat rolls like grape leaves or rosary beads neglected in some trinket box your great grandmother bought from Mecca a century ago, having counted the pillars in the mosque as evidence she’d been there. Some idle talk on the bus. And in comes the cockroach in his summer trunks fibrillating his limbs to an atavistic rhythm while your neighbor’s leg hairs are weeping willows in the compound pool. In the blue bus that swallowed the heat the heat was a leavened carcass. But your father knew the rules: you’re still a minor, and water still had dreams for you in wooden cartons on Thursday afternoons, figs the likes of which you haven’t tasted since.