Expiration

With you I always feel like I’m
trying
    to break in the wrong size of shoes.
Sometimes I sit and stew
over how you’re seventeen and
you think I’m a princess
  the trapped-in-a-tower kind
          and how you wear suits and talk about politics
and think you know the world.

My throat interrupts with an affronted gurgling sound
sometimes when I think about you,

  and how
you deal out advice where it just isn’t called for
you quote science-fiction to justify war
and you’re seventeen years old and you think I’m a princess
and you just have no blooming idea.

Darling, one of these days I will tell you my mind
But until then we’ll never fit
                                          right.

In truth
I’m afraid –
that even after that day
  you’ll still be trimmed hedges and high picket fences
when I want a field, open wide.