.
Leave
.
In Brighton, a suburb of Denver,
at 6:03 pm on a Tuesday, a woman
in dark shades is seen careening through
a yellow traffic light turning red,
grinning straight into the windshield
days rerunning behind her:
41 Christmases, 3 mortgages, 4 cars, 5 dogs
7 expired drivers licenses
2 slippers under the bed
Days fill
Nights fill
Glasses fill
Calendars fill
Beds fill
She never fills
But what life did she expect?
An ant is crawling across the
knuckles of her driving hand
He knows the answer but
he’s not telling her
Radio rising, orange tip of a
cigarette sparks the dark
out the window
a light beer in the cupholder
she eases down on the pedal
humming rubber on white concrete
going somewhere:
factories without smoke drowse soundless
ships sail from distant harbors
cars run silently at highway rests
numbered seats fly across time zones
the world continues to
be the same
without her.
.
.
Tony Walton is a Caribbean writer living in the Cayman Islands. His work has appeared in Storyteller Magazine, Moonkind Press, Wilde Magazine and others. Tony Walton
North of Oxford 
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