MORNING COMMUTE

A quick jerk of my ringless left hand is all
it would take. I could ruin this Tuesday
morning, the air sodden with near-rain

flirting with the grubby pines guarding
the shoulder of this everyday stretch
of Carolina highway, calling rainbow

oils to rise from hot asphalt. I count
the reasons not to stray from my lane
and the list is anemic: other people

have places to be and golden retrievers
waiting for them, I can’t afford to crash 
and live, my mother would never forgive me.

Colleen S. Harris earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Her poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (forthcoming 2025), Babylon Songs (forthcoming 2026), These Terrible Sacraments, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems, and chapbooks Toothache in the Bone (forthcoming 2025), That Reckless Sound, and Some Assembly Required. After making her home in New York, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and California, she now lives in Texas and works as a university library dean. You can find her as ‘warmaiden’ on Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter.