Driving Home From Work
She measures out her life in the changing
of the seasons she can taste through her car windows.
On muggy nights that must be Autumn,
she smells rain and wonders
if both sinks are still full of dishes
or just one. Time is roaches, time is ants
looking for a lapse. There are miles
sniffing around her kitchen,
of laundry, Kevin's baseball uniform
is dirty. She's been out of socks for days.
It wears her down, knowing,
someday, maybe already, she'll be that old woman
complaining behind the counter, that all the other girls
are polite to and pity and the boys just don't like.
The wheel hums beneath her, the front passenger side tire
pulls to the side and she can hear the stars
like radio static from some other country.
There are beans in the fridge that need to be eaten.
Hamburger meat about to go bad.
And she's thinking about a dream she had
the night before, in which her eldest, Ashley,
who'd been stepping out with some boy
she barely knew, confessed that she was pregnant.
The dream bothered her,
and even though she knew it wasn't real
she'd always hoped better from Ash.
Suddenly, she's home, sitting on the couch,
bathed in radiation from the television.
Then the day will flicker into night,
then tomorrow, the day after, the day after.
CL Bledsoe is the author of two poetry collections, Anthem (Cervena Barva Press, 2007), and _____(want/need)(Plan B Press, 2008). He is an editor for Ghoti Magazine http://www.ghotimag.com and lives in Maryland.