If you are here, you are already going the wrong direction.
Watch the potholes. And the tree branches that reach out
to scratch your windows. Stare straight ahead.
Don’t look at what this neighborhood doesn’t want you to see:
peeling paint on back porches, clotheslines sagging,
lined with stiff jeans and ripped flannel shirts,
two overturned shopping cars, and a blue plastic wading pool,
water thick with green algae and faded beach toys.
Watch for the stray cats that tumble through garbage cans,
for the sparrows that may dart out in front of you,
the same ones nesting in the broken headlight of an Old Buick,
its windshield wipers half-cocked, front doors hanging wide open.
Inhale slowly. Listen for your own heartbeat. This way,
you won’t hear the Def Leppard music, or the worn way people
fight, when there is little fight left inside of them.
Don’t see that naked Barbie doll in the brush, her arms stretched
out in front of her, eyes wide, never blinking, her smile tight.
If she could talk, this is what she would say to you:
when you are heading the wrong way, sometimes, it’s easier
to keep going than try to find a way to turn around.
-Karen J. Weyant
First published in Evansville Review
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