I Blow off my dead end straight into the drag of your eyes in the side mirror of your red wide wheel. Does your mama run? Would you smile at her like that? Would you hold back and force her forward with your bumper, like you just did me? Your elbow out the window and my neck right here, close enough to fill your palm. My eyes everywhere but up, unsure yet if you're bear or coyote. Dare you or freeze if it comes to a fight? Pray you'll spare me for my cubs, pray you have none. Were you training wheels or straight to two? Did your nan know when you first sailed past wild and alive, that you'd someday ignite and use that power to hunt bodies just like hers? Your dimple, like my boy, high on your cheeks, too soft for these thoughts. Raised beastly or born? Birth canal the first body put to your use. II Running hard, running numbers. How fast and how far til the turn where our choices are made? Each footfall a beat of the 'green light, green light, green light' that could see me back whole. Still my breath thanks to headphones—the first rule of running while girl—Joshua Whitehead extolling a penis, cold shrunken to sexless, his bubble breasts of prediction. How he preens in his mama's praise. The timing, I swear. Two people caught. Him in love, me in public, and neither of us Us. I'm seen sexed in this sports bra, breasts starved but still slutty; named girl in these jewel tones. Bright to be seen, bright to be safe. So bright I'm forced seen. III I’m miles away and still shaken thinking of the man my kid loves who eyed me up, calculating. Took me in, took her in besides, bade me turn to his scrutiny, and affirmed me smaller by volume. I was undone in the love of it. Seen. As person and purpose. Smaller by volume. Decisive & candid, with love in his eyes.