Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car
after Kelli Russell Agodon
I wish I’d kept going. Going. My sweet petals
to the metal. Burning rubber, stamens, stems.
“It won’t hurt,” he said.
“Just a tickle.”
Uncle Theo’s
breakfast. Whitefish breathing
down my neck.
Like the woman who drove to work crying in her car
Why didn’t I keep going? Going.
Tell me.
Could I have stopped
Theo’s beaming headlights,
eyes a piercing brown,
his slippery, garlic fingers
slinking up my skirt?
I floated above my
body.
Floated above and watched
the little girl below
wilting, wilting.
If only someone had taught her how to drive.
Diane Gottlieb is the editor of Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness and the Prose/CNF Editor for Emerge Literary Journal. Her writing appears in Brevity, River Teeth, SmokeLong Quarterly, Florida Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications. She is the winner of Tiferet Journal’s 2021 Writing Contest in nonfiction, and was a finalist for Hole in the Head Review’s 2024 Charles Simic Poetry Prize and The Florida Review’s 2023 Editor’s Prize for Creative Nonfiction. For additional information, visit: https://dianegottlieb.com and @DianeGotAuthor.
