The Poem on the Back of a Parking Ticket
I got the ticket. I wrote the poem. The poem was better.
I got the parking ticket on a Tuesday, in the rain, on a street I had parked on a hundred times without a ticket. The warden was already gone, the ticket was already on the windshield, and I was already late for the thing I had been trying not to be late for.
I wrote a poem on the back of the ticket. Not a good poem, not the kind that wins contests, but the kind that comes out when you are so angry you have to put it somewhere. I wrote about the rain and the ticket and the Tuesday and the way the warden had already gone before I could argue.
I left the ticket on the windshield. I didn't pay it. I let it sit there for a week, a poem about a ticket that was also a ticket, a protest that was also a poem.
When I finally paid it I kept the ticket. It is in the glove box now, the poem on the back, the ticket on the front, the proof that the worst days are the ones that produce the best poems.
I have written better poems since. I have never written a truer one.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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