Dorothy Surrenders Jessy Randall

The Path

He took her home on his bike. He said
"Would you like a ride home?"
and then took her on his bike
to his house.
She thought this meant
he wanted to marry her.
She accepted his proposal.
The path from the library to his street
where the pavement stopped, was hardly
a path at all -- more like a
narrow dirt rivulet snaking its way
between the trees. Tall yellow flowers
grew there, and a few stray raspberries,
but mostly hard, slap-you-in-the-face plants
no one would want in a garden.
It was like the thorny briar that grows
all around Sleeping Beauty’s castle,
the almost impenetrable barricade the prince
hacks his way through with a sword.

It seems to her now that the bike path
through the overgrown patch must have
glittered like lightning. And it must have
continued to shine like that for days afterward.
It may still be all lit up there.

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