Lucky Girl

by Ian Mullins

Stay out in the cold
Elizabeth, rain running down
your bare legs
eyes angry and sad
dreaming
of a long straight road
where you never scoot
to the scrublands to let cars
barrel by; jazz-walking
mute-trumpet style,
one foot tripping the other
the way one wave tumbles the next,

keep walking Elizabeth;
I don’t want to know
you married an architect
or a lawyer, moved to sweet suburbia
had three kids one dog
and told everyone who cared
how ‘lucky’ you were:

stay here in the rain,
the bare-legged mute-trumpet
rain; walk away and dream
of never looking back.