Do I remember this correctly,
that one day, the genial driver of
the gifted program shorty bus,
feeling positively merry
and having extra time to kill,
detoured through our neighborhoods
on the way back to our school
from our one-day-a-week school?
I think she could not drop us off
at our houses, per regulation, but
it was thrilling, somehow:
My house next! Do mine next!
as we guided her with directions
we knew well even though we were
years away from driving. Something
illicit, almost, about a yellow school bus
in the cul de sac of Elmway Drive,
all of us waving at my windows,
in case my mother saw us, before
going to the next unsuspecting house.
It was something like pajama day
at school, maybe—a heady blend
of public life and private. Also,
there was this: That bus driver
liked us. We had suspected, but now
we knew—it was like a geode, how
a rock can crack open sometimes,
reveal a sparkle of gems that was
just waiting for us to see it.

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Today’s Poem a Day Chapbook Challenge prompt was “myth.”