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

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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.