True North

I met her at the Rocking Horse Bar and Grill.  The serendipity of both of us at that longitude, latitude; the invisible lines we followed as our compass needles pointed to something better down the road; here was not a corral. When you’ve burnt bridges, dreams are flyovers of rusty rock and parched land belts, parachutes to escape are magic mushrooms floating in a sea of stinging jellyfish. I’m not a religious man, but truth be told, and why not for once - we were of a mind to question everything life hadn’t served up. Our eyes glimpsed longing, wished for latitude. I muted desire in the underpass, nodded, said hello, my name, and felt the warmth of her palm. We clinked glasses and cheered ourselves up; dared each other to ride the mechanical bull. We told our stories, their wellspring. I sang a childhood nursery rhyme of a place, of possibilities– of going places on my wooden rocking horse which I rode with ferocity swishing a tinfoil sword, slaying the dragons of my nightmares. At the end of the night someone played Take me Home Country Roads on the juke box perhaps to her beau. As for us, by the time her lips tugged on mine, it was not a beginning since we were already swept up in an undertow, and what was clear in the night’s starry eyes there was no damsel in distress or a lonely cowboy heading out of town, just us two, heading true north