Citybound

Graduation was a lit fuse.

I packed my bags and exploded.

Home was definitely a cradle I’d outgrown.

I wanted steel, noise, 

the pulse of somewhere else.

To my folks, the city was a beast with no face. 

Dad listed more warnings than the local weather reporter.

When mom wasn’t weeping, she prayed.

But I didn’t turn my head the once,

not when I had a skyline ahead of me.

“It’s those books,” they said. 

“Too many ideas, not enough sense.” 

But my ideas weren’t grand. Just mine. 

Enough to get me moving on out. 

I made plans. Not elaborate. Just enough to survive. 

To be a name on a lease, a face in a crowd, 

a flicker of thought in someone else’s day.

Some nights, loneliness came like a siren – 

loud, insistent, but I never turned back. 

I learned to feed myself, to pay the bills.

Mom and Dad still think they know the plot. 

But I’ve changed the genre. 

And the books I read now – 

they don’t come with easy endings.

And I can’t help reading them.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Trampoline and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.