Poemish.

I wrote this poem about a half-hour ago. I've had the first line in my head a few weeks, after reading the latest issue of Philosophy Now. It doesn't have a title (yet), but here goes:



Is he free to breathe or is he making this all up?
Has he even lungs to begin with?
If he follows this road, is that a choice he made --
Or has his path been pre-determined?

"I refuse," he said, "to believe that I am just a link in a chain.
And I refuse," he went on, "to agree that maybe I was never meant to leave.
I'm happy knowing my mistakes."

He found a hotel and stopped and asked a cashier
Was she ever smiling for real?
She just pulled the corners of her mouth up high
And said hey, she can fake it if she wants.

He invited her, he thought, into his car and rolled the windows that still worked all the way down.
He said, "Screw hotels," and they peeled out and watched a hundred sunsets from the front seat.
They never exchanged names, just a glance or two when hills and trees gave way to flattened plains or sun-soaked sand.
They spent a hundred days and a hundred and one nights and breathed new air, together, by choice.