No Wrong Turns
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
There are no wrong turns.
Each and every time you have been lost
You have eventually found your way out;
It is the same with journeying inside.
Walls appear when moments before
There were none,
Dead ends rise up like tombstones when you
Least expect them to,
Passageways narrow suddenly, and fall off
Into deep ravines,
But here you are, reading this—and this
Is hope on a string of words;
Take them or leave them, the fact remains
You are reading them, hearing them
Now
Here
Now
Safe
Now
Without guardrails
And you are still not falling.
I get it, don’t worry. I am lost
Much of the time myself, I hardly ever know
Where the road is going—if it indeed goes anywhere.
Somedays I look down the road
And only mist, or mist-infused darkness loom;
Somedays the road ahead looks more like a movie screen
Of the past than a road, and somedays,
I even begin walking or exploring the edges
Only to pull myself upright at the slightest sound
And go back to where I was, and sometimes,
Even that place—the back where I was place—
Is gone; and sometimes, and, oh, I feel terrible
For saying this—but sometimes the road
Is so utterly lonely, even though it is inhabited
By many fine souls—living, dead, in between—
And there are fireflies, and stars, rivers, and buttercups,
And there is singing and crickets, and always, the moon;
Let’s face it though—the road can be hard,
And gravel gets in your shoes,
And the desire arises more often than you would like to admit
To simply roll up into a ball and dissolve into even more nothing
Than you sometimes already feel—
And yet, it is the only road you need,
And no matter where you let it take you, or how far you go,
Or how slowly you go, there are still no wrong turns.