Runaway by Emily Strempler

Boy, you always did have those eyes, didn’t you?

Prairie highway for a gaze, boy

Due South to Mexico, West to the coast, boy

Anywhere but here in a third-hand pickup

If I had your mother, boy, would I

The day she slaps you

You can’t look at me the same way no more

And after—

Walk me down, over fences and fields

            Through the forest, that broken down

            One time house, past the property line

“I could fix this up, if I wanted,” you say.

“Wouldn’t even cost much.”

Faith is a dotted yellow line to nowhere

Ask me again, in words between words

I never said no, but

I never said yes, either

---

“I normally write fiction, not poetry. This came to me largely fully formed, and in a voice I wouldn't normally write in. It doesn't fit well within the broader canon of my work, and I didn't try hard enough to find a home for it before giving up and relegating it to the dustbin of scrapped pieces. My short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly and JAKE and is upcoming in Cloves Literary (Nov 2022) and The Bitchin' Kitsch (Jul 2023).”

Emily Strempler (she/her) is a queer, (White) German-Canadian, ex-fundamentalist writer of inconvenient fiction. Raised in a deeply conservative prairie community, she married at eighteen before leaving the church and moving out west. She is an intersectional-feminist, anti-colonist, and abolitionist. You can find her on Twitter @EmilyStrempler and Instagram @estrempler.