tonywalt
11-18-2025, 11:28 AM
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 fading 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 lowered,
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.
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 fading 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 lowered,
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.