ManicDDaily

Between a Hard Place

He had not meant to go
for the jugular.
He’d just aimed for the cheap shot,
the kind of thing
that might nick a wing.

The others’ laughter rippled
a shallow pool,
but the face she would not turn to him
was like the face of a stone he’d sometimes kick
the way home, as a child,
the sun burning through his bangs, for he was mad,
mad that he could keep that stone
to his curbed path, but not roll back
the day.

Truly, any rock would do,
but he found his shoe searching
for one of those round smooth stones, that kind that looked long soothed
by blue water, and sometimes, when he found a good one
he’d pick it up at last, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over its coolness, imagining
some soft stroke back.

More often, he’d pick up what he kicked
and throw it at a sign or car until
the rattle spun so loud it shot him
into a flight whose speed alone near petrified him; he tried then
to ape insouciance, but would end
in a side-armed lope that made him
look the nicked one,
the wounded.

Now, he tried
to make her look at him,
but it was like making a stone
look back and the heart that wanted to fly to her
soon wanted to throw something, tightening
like a fist around
what that might be–what beat at him.

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8th sort-of-poem (yes, I know it’s really a draft story, not a draft poem–sorry! ) for April, 2015 National Poetry Month for Marian’s prompt on With Real Toads to write about a poem one regrets.  I really just could not write about that subject right now but went with words that one regrets.