Narrow Roads

Our conversations have narrowed

What were once wide

And busy highways

Are now dirt country

Backroads, almost

bike paths or walking trails

They are slender streets with

Unlit lampposts

We’ve been reduced to talk of

Cigarette prices and

“How’s your mother been?”

“Good, thanks for asking”

Sometimes I catch you on roads

We’ve been down before

You’ve asked me questions

Three or four times since

I met you and the answer hasn’t

Changed. Our lanes are lacking

Soon I suppose

we will meet a dead end

But when I think of how

Our spacious streets were once

Open and endless, like we’d

Be driving forever,

I cannot stop the car.

 

 

Alexa Bocek is a young writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whose work has appeared in The Claremont Review, Literary Heist, Mystic Blue Review, and Pulp Literary magazine. She’s an editor and staff member of BatCat Press. She has also won several awards and honorable mentions for her poetry, fiction, and screenwriting. She’s been writing for several years and attends the Lincoln Park Performing Arts school as a Literary Arts student.