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Flower Child
she never told him the truth
instead she said his father
had not returned
from the battle field
with names
spelled at times with a K or a C
or cut-off, clipped
her tongue choking on make-believe
foreign syllables
had never existed
she swore she’d tell him
when he reached eighteen
old enough to understand
those crazy years
guitar and alcohol music
perfume of grass in the nights
and the wild days
coming, going, exchanging
intimacy, just a bunch
of careless denim teenagers
one of them was there
for sure in a graying photograph
of all of them she kept
inside a copy of The Fountainhead
they all looked alike
young, defiant, writing a novel
or tracing tattoos of a clean new world
inside her thighs
it could have been any one of them
it doesn’t matter any more
on route 90, two in the morning
she overturned her purple and yellow
Volkswagen into a ditch
her son went on to be an officer
decorated for bravery
and later a scientist
a surgeon
a famous author or poet
one of those…
someone his parents would have been proud of
© Johnmichael Simon
2014
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