Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Good Behavior

Two o’clock
and I’m sitting down to write
for the first time.
I don’t know where the morning went
I swear it was ten thirty a few minutes ago
and I was seventeen
leaving for college,
my wardrobe strung across the back of my Buick
on a pole
leaving my parent’s house
forever.
I didn’t realize till just now
that it was forever,
but it was.
Once I left for L.A.
I never came back.
Home was a dorm room,
then an apartment at the beach,
then a house in Nashville.
I never moved back into my own room
with the black out curtains and the Century furniture
and the fighting down the hall that never stopped.
I never even thought about going back
like the other kids who moved into their parent’s basement
and then hung out there for a couple of years till they got good jobs
and got married.
For me,
once I was gone,
I was gone for good.
I had done my time.
I even got out a year early
for good behavior.