Overheard at the coffee shop: NaPoWriMo #1

Did You Make a Date To Go To the Circus?

The barista (I’ve always wanted a title like that) asks me a simple question, tilting her head, her hair, her eyes. I wonder how she does not fall over from the weight of her question. I am sure I hear her whistle the first few bars of Send in the Clowns. Between the air hissing out of the espresso machine and the mocha java mist spraying from her tuneless lips, I am sure, I know, I heard her say, Did you make a date to join the circus? How did she know? I thought this was Professor Java’s, not Madame Olga’s. I stopped riding bare backs of horses long ago. Stopped bowing to high-hatted men bearing whips way before my hips gave in to child bearing. With my tattoos lasered off, my slightly arched, solidly respectable suburban eyebrows lasered on, I was sure I passed for wifely. At the very least, with my sequins hidden beneath nubby fleece, I could be assumed mother. It has to be the tightrope. I have hauled myself up onto that thin slice of wild so many times there are wires thin as spider webs rooted in my soles. Tomorrow I will leave the net at home.



*****************************************

A prose poem for Read. Write. Poem. Based on something I overheard, incorrectly. I'm not sure if I have mastered the prose poem form, but it's a start. The poem cam eout not as I had planned, but more stream-of-consciousness style. Comment/critique welcome! I'd like to do more with this one...whatever that may be!