“If I Don't Come Home They Won't Know Where To Look for Me” by Julianna McCarthy

If I don't come home they won't know where to look for me.

My third grade definitions were quite simple:
say — saying
see — seeing
lie — “lying” my “best thing”
a liar by habit, by choice.
Wanting to be left alone to pick
fruit from trees, flowers from
front yards, to call dogs from
back yards and go places
I was told never to go
by myself by myself. Forbidden
to crouch my way through
the wall of sycamorbordering
the cliff above the lake. To inch down
the narrow trail to the water's edge.
And wade in knee high, stand
till the sunfish nibbled.
I broke my ankle there once.
Lied about it.

Julianna McCarthy

Julianna McCarthy is an award-winning Los Angeles poet. Her poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Catamaran, Nimrod, Hole in the Head, and others. She has published two chapbooks, Photoplay and Everything Hurts. Her first full-length collection, Night Surgery, is available from Blue Horse Press.

Headshot:  Brendan Constantine

Photo Credit: Staff