Hi! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for visiting!
The road has rolled out
like a wet thick tongue,
saliva droplets of rain.
But you hardly notice,
foot pressing
harder against the gas pedal.
Can your car
keep up with you,
and your stubborn hands,
gripping the steering wheel
because it’s a real thing you
can hold in front of you?
The stereo is playing
like a heartbeat, the one seemingly missing
from your barren ribcage.
Static enters as you
drive your Saturn to the edge of the road.
Haze and dusk mix
together complimentary,
like Hennessey with Sprite.
Bitterness and sweetness are feelings
sensed around
the review mirror with your eyes in
it, staring.
You think this is the end.
The aches have attached themselves
like extra sets of bone.
You’re twenty; you can’t
imagine yourself reaching
forty, but there she is,
a woman,
who looks like she’s eighty, still here,
and grabbing for envelopes
inside an open mouthed mailbox.
You stop. She reminds you of your
grandmother. Your fingers reach for the
phone sunbathing on the fabric passenger seat.
She’s so intent on searching through
on searching through
have you forgotten
how your mind used to slip through
darkness so easily?
You imagine how
the woman viewed herself in the mirror
sixty years ago,
young and doused in creamy pink silk,
belly poking out
like a soft sea sponge deep
in the ocean, her feet
sunken into the plush carpet.
You drop
the knife in your hand
and stop asking questions.
Dusk settles. At the end of the day
what we bring inside us, is what? you ask
and at the end of life,
what else do bodies plan to give?
Kelly E. Foster is a creative writing student at George Mason University and a University of Virginia Young Writer’s alumna. Her poems have been published in various literary magazines such as Polaris, Volition, Sucarnochee Review, and Bethesda, as well as blog-writing contests and scholarly essays by Stillhouse Press and George Mason Review. Two of her poems were awarded by the Poetry Society of Virginia. Last October/November, the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center awarded her poem first prize for its World Press Photo Caption Contest. Kelly can be found at her website here.