The downpour drives the earwigs from their cracks,
Two Sunday hours, briefly all my own.
Six-legged strangers walking on the stone,
A light rucksack of colours on my back.
There was a time I craved to be called good,
That eager child who always knew the answer,
Who raised her hand the way she knew she should—
Pick me! I know! I'll prove it if I could!
Now freedom is the books I'll never read:
Keynes, Milton, Shiller, Suhyun, Chen, Royal.
Twenty years of tending others' need,
Released at last from all that constant toil.
These jimmies sprinkled on the small—
I've nothing left to prove. Nothing at all.