Your Taxi Driver Might Also Build You a House
Image: Sun-Son, Colleen Surprise Jones (18″ x 24″, acrylic paint on canvas, 2020)
Your Taxi Driver Might Also Build You a House
by Colleen Surprise Jones (Paris, France)
EDITORS’ NOTE:This poem forms part of The Opiate vol. 32 (Winter 2023) and is reprinted in The Faculty Lounge by kind permission of The Opiate and Colleen Surprise Jones. If you are interested in contemporary literature, we enthusiastically recommend The Opiate, a quarterly devoted to fiction and poetry, available from all major online retailers such as Book Depository, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.
Your taxi driver might be the one who builds you a house
He brings the nails
But also takes you to where you’re going
You thought you’d purchased a ride
But you purchased a home
You thought about a home before the ride
But ordered the ride before the home
And were comfortable with the nails he brought before he offered you a ride
He came to build you a home
You thought about needing a home before purchasing the ride
The taxi driver saw you coming
You saw the home before the rideYou were surprised he offered you a ride
He brought nails and you forgot about the ride
And remembered you needed a home
And accepted the nails thinking that’s what you ordered
You believed the home was more important than the ride
Your destination wasn’t at the end of the taxi
But at the end of the ride
The destination paid for the home
That’s why he brought the nails
The taxi driver saw you coming
You saw the nails before the ride
You saw the home before the rideThe taxi bought your home
The taxi brought you home
But you were going somewhere else
You reached the destination by accepting the nails
The destination isn’t the nails
The destination brought you homeThe destination brought you home
The destination bought your home
You needed the taxi driver to get you there
The destination brought you home
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