Roadside Assistance
We are weary in sweat and heat that settles like skin to skin. Deep in the buzz and whir of small things, dragonflies, mosquito blood suck. We left his car a mile back, broke down again. “What are you giving up for me?” he asks. Accusing is a love right, and any answers feel thinner than shoulders and margins. The old egg and rot smell is a patch of fur in the brush that might have screamed. I never stumble when putting one foot in front of the other. I never scream when confronted. What more to give than this?
Ra’Niqua Lee is a PhD student of English at Emory University, and she has an MFA from Georgia State University. She writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Split Lip Magazine, Fractured Literary, Watershed Review, and elsewhere. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her always.
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