Conversation on Curfew

A guarded patience guilds the baleful stare,
the right to independence cocks its brow,
the thin veneer of acquiescence there
slips off to leave a sheer defiance. Now

My heart beats, a small rabbit caught in headlights,
my feet shift but stay firmly on the floor,
as I perceive before me one inch more
than six feet of adolescence poised for fight.

Teeth are bared, eyes narrowed, while resisting
voices form an impassed out of time
spent in battle, joined in fierce insistence
as one side pulls and one side holds the line.