Improv 2, Week 7

“Grounding” –Sandra Meek
By morning,
we’d mutinied, abandoned that broken plane
for a city I’d known only as a small
window of night, a bracelet of white lights
dissolved now by dawn.
--
By twenty, we’d mutinied, forsaking
parents and pastors, twining homework
with minimum wage and shower quickies.
Two years since I’d spoken to a father,
too discomforted to tell him I’m angry,
I don’t call you dad, I can’t love you. His
voicemails landed like birds, irritated with
the branch flailing between talons. He
taught me to fry onions and season venison,
but not to balance checkbooks or marry
once. I used to think cheating was hereditary,
but I acquiesced to social conditioning, and set
to breaking habits like knuckle cracking and
thumb suckling. Folding bed sheets beside me,
my boyfriend asked, Why won’t you call him?