Wallflower

I’d rather be a wildflower

than pasted to the wall

with all the other pre-teen girls

giggling at the boys who punched

each other 30 feet away.

Teachers tried to show us

how to climb the social ladder,

unlike our folks who smoked and drank

and played bridge every night.

We didn’t understand that interaction

led to things like weddings, babies,

mortgages, affairs, divorce.

We only knew that dancing

with the other sex was gross.

published in Sonnets to Sing