Jupiter, Florida
       

80 degrees, unusually hot for winter.
No snow or ice on the roads.
I travel here by car to leave all other
worries and men behind, except one
man who sleeps beside my body
but refuses to touch my bending flesh.

Do we always end up in bed
with our fathers? With men
who turn away from the women
we have become. All I can do
is gaze through the slats
at the full Christmas moon
and try to untangle the jangle
of stringed-lit thoughts at 2 AM again.

The constant push-pull me
of the opposite sex spins this
mind into dizziness. How can
I stand still and steady with all
this motion? Where's the potion
to make the wrong men visible
early on? Subconscious jokester,
oh great heckler in my head,
reveal his face before it even begins.
Why not clue me in, say who to
turn away from before he even mouths
'hello'.

Jupiter. I have been lured far away
from myself to a planet too distant from
the one I once knew. Caught up
in the coming and going, those revolving
doors delivering one face after the next
all wrong so very wrong for me. I want
to drift back through the black sky,
pulling stars inside my pockets on the way
back so that dark nights like this will illuminate
a path wide enough to finally allow me to see.

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Copyright © 2017 Maureen Sherbondy All rights reserved
from Belongings
Main Street Rag Publishing
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission