The Tilted Chase for Forever

Dixie dreams on a shabby couch,  

cradling her heart like a cracked vase.  

She charges at the windmills of love,  

blindfolded, fists up, teeth bared.  

Her suitors come like stray cats—  

uneven, starving, full of fleas.  

She feeds them scraps of her faith,  

says, "Love can glue the broken."  

But life's no damn charity for dreamers;  

the rent rises, the clock punches harder,  

and the barstools hold more truths  

than anyone wants to swallow.  

She believes she's building a cathedral,  

brick by brick, with cracked hands,  

but it's just a shack leaning sideways,  

an unfinished hymn to what never fits.  

I watch her at the corner of the room,  

a raging knight in tin-foil armor.  

"What’s wrong can be made right,"  

she says. The jukebox laughs louder.