The one that got away Melinda Jean

I. How could it have been different?
Perhaps no adoption no smoothing mother,
that's him although
hear me!
I, the voices like the small echoing deaths.
Not all at once
one here, or now and again
they then crowd, drowning-out
even their own voice
until the murmur is the blur static
like on a radio station that has shut down for the night,
actually maybe there in the dark
I can start to sort and find was it me who got away?
Did I even show up?

II. The many rushes into living.
I couldn't stand still, but could I?
Or maybe can I now is more the question.
What we have;
something that is molded by hands,
hands of mothers, fathers, and all the "have to's."
I remember walking to school as a girl
and so very grateful for those minutes when my thoughts
could be my own and I could just listen, it was such a finding.
I don't know that there is "a get away"
it is a moving on
a way of not staying dead.
Maybe I haven't meet the one that got away
unless of course it's me.