Rough Mechanics by Jennifer Donnell

You ask about the line, what it is and why I walk it.
Is it the reason I’m a bad girl
and, if so, will I be your bad girl?
That’s right I heard what you were thinking.

The problem is, you assume I live with precision, 
that everything about me is out of choice.
When it’s not as if men choose to be blind,
only so they can feel faces 
with rough mechanics, hungry for touch.

There was no questionnaire I filled out in utero, 
but here I am, and if I’m blind to the norm,
I can’t tell you. 
Some manage to thrive off a rule book,
but that’s never appealed to me.
I’m not as impressed by Stonehenge,
as I am with apples growing on trees,
because I don’t know 
how they came to be there either.

So I won’t be held back,
by the lines of barbed wire stretched
across my lover's thigh, or the firing squad,
or the potential that something might go wrong.
What would life be without some edge?
The world is round and if I walked my way to France,
this type of thinking might be encouraged-
which way is France from here?

I can’t post date a statement about my future, 
declare how I’ll live it,
 the longitude and latitude of with whom, or why.
 Instead, I’ll risk this bubblegum roulette,
let it affix to the soles of my responsible boots,
 heavy from step, while I’m ready to dance.

I’ve been waiting on a certain kind of melody
and I hear it, now, in your wolf whistle.
It’s the low slow cry of possibility and hope-
a tower of perpendicular rock,
a fresh picked red apple,
designed without trademark.