mental snapshot of a girl late to class

  Yours is a million-strand river,

  a yellow tributary, kinks

  of broken gold eating the sunlight.

  Maybe the wind will keep

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  those bleached shoe strings

  out of laser-point blue eyes.

  Your head jerks back like a horse,

  paddocked, looking through me

  into the puddles of concrete.

  My locks do not rival rapids

  or waterfalls. Nor do they fall

  horizontally like your near-white

  flag of surrender,

  shoes beating the concrete

  as discreetly as possible.