When Allen Left

He did not yet have language—
not for where he was going,
or for what was happening.
Not to ask for his mother,
or when he would return to her.

But he had not been alone on the train.

There was a boy—
Allen—
who had been there from the beginning.

He had watched over him,
just as my grandmother had asked.

He stayed with him
until they reached the school—
until he was brought to his dorm,
until he was no longer standing there by himself.

But Allen could not stay.

It was getting late.

He had his own place to go—
his own dorm,
his own building.

He waved—
and then he left.

My father cried.

He cried as a boy.

And he cried again
when he told me the story
many years later.

He was eighty-seven years old.

And still—
he felt it.

That moment—

when he was no longer
being led into the unknown,

but left alone in it.

— Gathering the fragments, one memory at a time…