You can go your own way,
but when I go absent-mindedly
against that pesky one-way
at the end of N. State Street,
coffee cravings fall to the wayside
and I’m orb-eyed and snorting,
an insubordinate, spirited filly.
I should’ve seen the signs,
or had a second thought at the lack
of forward-facing stoplights,
but instead I sang distractedly
to Joni’s Mitchell’s Amelia,
(“Until you get there yourself,
You never really know,”)
and challenged the yellow lines,
ripping their reins away.
As if some gate were lifted,
I sprint beyond the eddies of oxytocin,
the vales of mom jeans and Aerostar minivans.
Yet nurture strong-arms my nature,
And like whip to flesh,
I conform.
Beside an SUV I lock eyes
With a pig-tailed girl writing poems
in window condensation,
her finger scribbling like a compass needle.
I fear the pull of this arterial is stronger than
she knows, that her poems will be lost to
doodled dream houses and baby names,
the longer she follows this supposed one-way.
