Silly Girl: a Poem

Write a poem about your own road not taken-about a choice of yours that has “made all the difference” and what might have happened had you made a different choice.
(Prompt by Maureen thorson)

Don’t fall in love
at first sight,
you silly stupid girl.

Don’t look
into those magnetic eyes
and believe
words that tumble out
(like falling boulders).

They will land on your heart
and shatter it.

When he says “love”,
it’s a vacuous word,
but you made the mistake
of looking into those magnetic eyes.

You brought him into your home.
Offered him refuge and comfort
from a cold, cruel world.

(Not recognizing the frozen hostility
from his lungs and fists.)

When he was on top of you,
he begged for you to tell him
“love”
(like it was wedding vows).
You whispered it
(like it was a secret).

You waited nine months
to see
what the secret hatched.

And your heart splintered and cracked
only a hundred and twenty-two times
along the way.

Abandoned something pure,
relinquished the first thing that loved
unconditionally
(twice),
but what if…

_{what if? what if?}

What if you had been selfish
and kept that whispered secret
bundled to your chest
(like a trinket from a relationship
gone wayward)?

What if you had held it
to your heart
and allowed it to suckle from your breast?

Secrets,
just like hearts (and drywall),
can break,
shatter to dust and leave holes
that need to be spackled over.

No one could predict a tornado,
but now, they map the changing weather
and warn you
when storms rumble through.
(Warnings that could very well save your life…
and theirs.)

-inspired by Robert Frost’s “The Road not Taken”