Going forward.

a standing axle
watching whirring spokes
parade in blurry excess
uncertain
but overcome with the certainty of
some mysterious, imminent
impending doom

the breakneck forward motion
momentum of past decisions
carrying through this current
uncertainty
a narrative with a
single beginning and a
single middle
but a plethora of unwritten ends

~~~

what’s a girl to do, 
having rejected whole cloth the
NormalTypicalStandardAccepted
speeding down unexpected paths
fueled by youth and guts and
a crippling fear of inconsequentiality

only to find herself, one distant day
sooner than she expected perspective to
put down its foot,
a standing axle surrounded by whirring spokes,
crossroads enshrouded,
unclear destinations with less clear
journeys stretching the chasms between
here and there

what she did not want
she still does not
what was not her path
still is not
but she has not the vigor anymore
for endless questions and
trying lives on for the sake
of wandering

she never wanted to fit in
but she’s starting to wonder if
maybe she doesn’t want to fit,
just a very little, 
somewhere -
to know a world where, if she left,
there would be a her-shaped hole
that no one and nothing else could fill

~~~

a standing axle
a spoke-less, solid wheel
molasses movement
ponderous and steady
a breath and a pause
holding court before 
every creaking cycle 

arriving on a threshold
one slow foot at a time,
not breathless from a race,
but gently
with space and time enough
for delivering quiet poetry