“Why?” by Gerald So

Allie asked
in a stolen moment
why I joined up to fly.
Leaving the ground
for fun was nuts enough,
she said.
Why do it for war?

I didn’t want to fly straight,
I said honestly.
Straight was too easy.
I wanted to buck and roll.
So what if cannons
and planes shot at me?
They missed.

Why else?

It was the first
I asked myself,
the why winding
through every move
I’d made since:

Why did I cheat,
why did I lie
when I was lucky,
smart enough
to get whatever, whomever
fair and square?

Straight was too easy,
I say still
to the walls of my cell.

Gerald So edits The Five-Two weekly crime poetry site at poemsoncrime.blogspot.com. Previously he served as an officer of The Short Mystery Fiction Society and fiction editor for Kevin Burton Smith’s www.thrillingdetective.com.

Image from Pixabay, altered by Cartoonize.net.