Leaving

[tonywalt]

She took the car,
the long grey road opening
like a tongue from the mouth of the house.

No one chased. No one called.
The radio whispered—
fugitive songs for runaway mothers.

The sky was a low bruise.
Miles fell behind her like old letters
she didn’t want to read.

She drove through it—
cornfields stiff as soldiers,
billboards promising god or sex
or air-conditioned sleep.

When the sun folded,
she pulled into a motel
with numbers missing from its sign,
VACANCY buzzing like a trapped fly.

Inside—
thin towels, bedspread like a bad decision,
and the ice bucket, sweating.

She drank gin from a paper cup.
Alone. Finally alone.
The mirror caught her face sideways—
a girl who had almost vanished
beneath wife, beneath mother, beneath woman.

And the phone didn’t ring.
And no one knew the room number.

Floating in the quiet,
her pulse slowing.