losing our grip on purpose

by

Sam Hendrian

Held her breath while the subway door opened
Like a toddler learning to swim,
Her eyes both sterile and suspicious
She wouldn’t be coming back.

It wasn’t that she’d given up on life,
It was just that she thought life had given up on her
And she didn’t want to go the way of the unrequited lover
Sending letters to a nonexistent post office box.

Mickey D’s hat and a granola bar
Were enough to tell onlookers which master she served
Not that anyone was really looking anyway,
Too lost in their own clock-in claustrophobia.

Freedom is another form of bondage
At least so she’d grown up being told;
Better to have the safety of structure
Than the danger of do-what-you-please.

Tossed a smile at an empty chair
Meant for the widowed regular
Who must have taken his business somewhere else
Or disappeared altogether.

In her rare spare time
She returned to places where she once suffered
Simply as a reminder
That she usually made it through.

Sam Hendrian is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and poet striving to foster empathy through art. Every Sunday, he writes personalized poems for passersby outside of Chevalier’s Books, LA’s oldest independent bookstore. 

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