A husband or wife

Kids

A regular job or some kind of inheritance

A drive for security.

I have fear

But it won’t drive me to keep doing

Something I hate

Or to stay at a job that dries my soul.

In those places, there’s only the steel fences of boundaries that devour delicate gray green shoots and whitish veins.

My life was never about that

I’ve not understood

What

My life has been about

But I know this—I won’t stand in line

To find out

I’ll go soaring and skipping

Across geeen fields

In bare feet

And when the hall monitor tells my 16 year old self to put my shoes on

I’ll run away and shout over my shoulder

“I will, when I get to class”

And she will shake her head and threaten detention after school for three days

But my feet won’t be contained

By the ordinary shoes

Of normal people

– Uma Bode