This poem is called "My Father's Leaving."
"When I came back, he was gone.
My mother was in the bathroom crying, my sister in her crib
restless but asleep.
The sun was shining in the bay window,
the grass had just been cut.
No one mentioned the other woman,
nights he spent in that stranger's house.
I sat at my desk and wrote him a note.
When my mother saw his name on the sheet of paper,
she asked me to leave the house.
When she spoke, her voice was like a whisper
to someone else, her hand a weight on my arm
I could not feel.
In the evening, though, I opened the door
and saw a thousand houses just like ours.
I thought I was the one who was leaving,
and behind me I heard my mother's voice
asking me to stay.
But I was thirteen and wishing I were
a man I listened to no one, and no words from a woman I loved
were strong enough to make me stop."