Still Looking For

She said it sounded like

I was still looking for permission.

I said yes. I drove home

and turned the admission

over in traffic—forty minutes—

and thought: not right.

Not wrong, exactly—off.

A light

aimed at the wrong wall.

I pressed the parking stamp—

the mechanical thunk of it—

and drove up the ramp

and thought: that's the opposite.

That's not what I said.

I drove home. Made something.

Went to bed

still running the phrase.

Still looking for permission.

As if that's what I'd meant.