Fortune

YOUR MENTALITY IS PRACTICAL AND ALERT
claimed the cookie,
in tall blue print above my lucky numbers
and the Chinese word for “soup.”
I slapped my hand to my mouth and grinned,
slumped in a sunless cell of whiteboard walls
and fading Expo markers,
gorging myself on pork-fried rice
and the bland milieu of histology text.
Yes, I thought, this is good news
after failing my first exam by two
flawed bubbles on a salmon-colored Scantron slip,
Fortune says I’ll be a doctor, after all.

I remember a time
God, six years ago…
I clung to the arm of my punk-rock lover,
nuzzled into his neck tattoos,
not quite at home in my blue-streaked hair.
His mom fed the ferrets and nodded, approving,
… maybe a little relieved, I think…
“He finally picked a keeper,” she said,
“you’re so… practical.”
PRACTICAL. The word fell
clunk on my ears, and I guess I was
offended. After all, wasn’t I the one
with graffiti jeans and the aching
poems spilled in the margins of calculus notes?
Who was this bland and practical girl
a mother might endorse? Not me.

Not me?