weekends & every other tuesday

today
she beats herself up because she hadn’t thought ahead
she’d gone with her emotions full steam into a romance &
in it she lost her head,
she believed in what she thought would always last
until it didn’t &
somewhere along the way she got
pregnant---
as things will go, he decided that she,
being younger & highly involved in her climbing
her own particular career ladder,
would lead her to not be around as much,
custody was made joint &
so now she sees her daughter on the
weekends &
every other tuesday---
still, many of her friends say she got lucky,
that with a better bunch of lawyers &
a whole lot of funds,
he could have walked away from her completely,
making more of the amphetamines which she dabbled in
to stay up for a couple days on end
to finish the crunch of a school semester---
now firmly rooted in her own path &
with success just looming over the horizon,
a life that to her could have been as full & bright as a
storybook tale,
is tainted with the mistake made
of which all she can do is learn &
hope her daughter doesn’t do the same.