At every stop
They saw you before you did
With impatient eyes and crooked grins
Hungry bodies bulging
Hands that closed your world
And opened your legs
Rattling your inner being beyond
The already mangled mess
It was
Another in a string of foggy roads you traveled
Trusting strangers with your life
Because you couldn’t trust yourself
You didn’t even think to ask what the destination was
You just went along with it
Trying to make out the blurred world
Through the backseat window
As you disappeared down the road
You were stringing together the frayed dreams of others
Allowing any distraction from the tired truth
The bawling hatred that was waiting
At every turn
Waiting like he was
Knowing you would stumble after that last one
And not remember the way home
Tracy Haught is a graduate of Cameron University, majoring in English Literature and minoring in creative writing. Her writing has appeared in The Oklahoma Review, Poetry For The Masses, Polyphony, Sugar Mule, Magnapoets, The Whistling Fire, will be forthcoming in the July issue of Prime Mincer, and was anthologized in “Aint Nobody That Can Sing Like Me.” Tracy won the Matt Haag fiction contest in 2007 for her short story “Beyond Bonnie’s House,” and again in 2009 for “Where We Come From.”
