Where Wrought My Own Degree

Cars are not places to spill gunpowder wishes,
to light refracting torches held
in half-sure hands
lined and balanced with truths only
judged to be understood.
But you could never be blamed for turning
left when stop was so apparently right
in front of another.

My eyes have long since wasted
upon silhouettes that cartwheeled and flipped
only momentary weightlessness.
I can’t breathe with your lungs.
My stamina has abandoned my hope
for movement. Or maybe it was an
intentional discharge.
Don’t look at me as I try to convince you of my aim.
I grew fatigued chasing apologies,
panning for my own in the belief that you wouldn’t
have me without such payments.

I have since learned that freedom
tastes like violins, scrubbing all these
rusted joints to perfection
so that I could dance
and I didn’t need your hands to keep me balanced.
I am right-side up
with daisy dreams and glacial-fed streams,
new, exact, beautiful
And I sleep every night tucked into quilts of summer stars.
I found easels in my back pocket
where once you said only my shadows lurked.

Frames are sitting on this world that
you never told me about. I’m cauterizing all the wounds
bleeding from manipulations bred beneath
unjustifiable wanderings.
There is a soldier on this back I bear.
Dangerous is only the first explosion in
discovery.