Darling, I'm fine.

A bold-faced lie through a bared teeth smile. A deflection of the questions from your prying mind. A fifty pound weight held between you and I.

Fine is a damnable word. Everything is fine as we fly through the city night watching as the streets transform into tarmacs before our eyes. Everything is fine as we conceal our worries in the front seats and look out with preoccupied vacancy. Everything is fine as we see both in here and out there, slowly realizing that the streets here go nowhere.

But darling, did you ever think that the streets where we drive and spend our times are just long, long, letters to the sky? That maybe the turns are the letter Us and the lights are where we dot the Is? Maybe the forks are where I ask you why as we choose between left and right. There's no winding back after the hows or the whys but we can't be bothered with wasting time. We've ridden over these roads before and said the same words, I'm sure, what does it matter if we can do it some more?

Quick, don't pause, don't wait. Right, choose right, I'm always right. If I had chosen left, you would have left, right?

I'm fine.

Those times that we spent bridging the gaps between you and me loomed over our happiness ominously. Those moments had been watching us, policing us, more than we had been policing them. They chased us through the choices we made, and when we hesitated, they halted us. In the showdown between the ground and sky, they seized us.

We were fined.

We paid the fine for speeding through the nights, the blue lights reflected in our love drunk eyes. Those moments finally cornered us, full-forced and strong. We surrendered and they beat us, wanting to win more than we wanted to lose. They broke the bridges that our hands built between us and broke the hope etched into our faces as the moon turned away her own. We were forced to look these moments in the eyes, and acknowledge that there was nowhere to hide.

But darling, even after all this? I'm fine.

Fine pays itself in the seconds that its said. Fine is the fee of admission for our active omission to being anything other than ok. Fine is the price we pay to be wondrously wounded and reckless resilient. We paid the fine, and no matter how much it taxed us or took from us, and no matter how many times we were told...

We were fine, but those moments had come and gone.

As we make the defeated drive home, sitting in a sobering silence, I've realized these streets may just be scribbles after all. As we round the bends, one or two or three times more, the clearest thought is the quickest way home.

The moments may have caught us, but we can still be strong. Defeat will try to find us as darkness approaches dawn. The lights may just be lights, and the Us will still be Us. But darling, I'll be fine.

And in the end, you will be too.

My first time competing in Slam Poetry... lol. yay me?

If I didn't do it, Kayte would have guilt tripped me into it.