Sudie McGladdery stopped by the house digging 
up some trouble for both of us. She pines for 
Excitement in her life and says I need it worse. 
She know’d how to put it, as worse keeps
Lingering when it should travel on over the mountain. 

Mommy stepped to the front screen, the line marked
Between her eyes deeper than a spring branch. 
Sudie always means trouble. Mommy used to put
A stick to both of us to make us mind. Not that it 
Did much to slow Sudie, but I’d mostly straighten up. 

After hugging the kids and promising to be back soon,
We climbed into Sudie’s wreck of a car. While it looks 
More like it should live in the junk yard, it can pure fly. 
The radio blaring, trees flying by, air blowing through me. 
We took off down the mountain escaping time and trouble. 

Suspended in speed, captured in a free floating bubble,
My mind cleared and I got the jolt of my life. Sudden like
I knew in my gut where it counts that Orville was gone, 
He didn’t know I was running off like a fool, didn’t know
If I got home, didn’t know right from wrong from me. 

The tie, to strong, was pure broke. The car could go 
till midnight and take up again and go even more. 
Going back or not had nothing to do with us anymore. 
There was no us, there was only me. The trembling
Started somewhere deep inside, and I turned around. 

The new me needs to start somewhere else, not in this car
Going into trouble I don’t need and don’t want. Sudie
And her adventures will have to wait. Maybe the cracked
Mirror on the back porch will let me see me. A me who
Never was before and now has to take hard steps alone. 

Mommy and the kids get a part of this me, God sits
Up there somewhere expecting duty, a friend here
and about will need to be included, but now I am another
Person. She feels like a new pipped chick, seeing the sun
and feeling free air. Misery can whisper, but the new stays.