bending over to tie her shoes on a busy street sidewalk proved to be difficult

she didn’t care

saturday’s all seemed the same for Sam

the flow of faces, some familiar, couldn’t stop her from competing with laces or something similar

Sundays she wore straps

it wasn’t the shoes that caused her to stop

Sam enjoyed making people uncomfortable while claiming her spot

her space

Sam danced in construction zones while car horns roared out of habit. a cha cha cha to the blah blah blah of wherever the fuck people were going.

she wasn’t

going anywhere

anywhere as defined by what ‘they’ prepared to judge the way our minutes are tallied in effort to reward you for walking the right way on trained and narrow sidewalks not cumbersome back allies

Sam just walked

and danced

taking the road that’d give her a chance to unleash what years of school and people at the pool did to her with shame and fear a indelible smear on the soul of innocence that guts our ability to elevate out of this city not just our city or town or country but from the mental servitude that makes us destined to show gratitude to something somewhere that wants to stop us

from being us

conformity

Sam doesn’t tie double knots