Incarceration

Maybe the constellations are
just rhinestones half a mile
above our heads she says, looking
through the skylight over her bed. 

I say maybe there's been no real 
music made since What's Goin' On. 
She says maybe the road to 
New York City from this hick town 

is a promenade lined with lottery tickets.
Maybe we should go see, she says. 
Maybe she means it, but she is often 
fanciful after we bounce around.

Maybe… she says as she rolls away 
from me and falls asleep mid-sentence. 
I'm free to leave now, free to stay and
that liberty reminds me the Berlin Wall 

fell thirty-five years ago today and now 
pedestrians pass through Checkpoint Charlie 
with barely a glance. Maybe I have reason 
to believe my time in this world has been 

more liberation than oppression, but when 
I try to put that notion into words it still 
sounds more like a prayer. Now she's begun 
to snore so maybe I'll just leave her under 

the sparkle of rhinestones and slip out 
onto her roof, maybe count
the chimney swifts as they come home
the way prisoners do around the world, 
watching from their stone cells.

TOM BARLOW

Tom Barlow is an American writer whose work has appeared in many journals, including Trampoline, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, The North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. See tombarlowauthor.com.