I like to run in the woods, fear cast over my shoulder the minute I leave the town.
Women die running, yet we continue to enact the instinct to flee, the helix of prey and survival.
Women die anyway.
At four in the morning. After work. In the park. Before the lights come on.
Once upon a time, a man threw me against the bed.
He lay in waiting, a lizard.
Once upon a time, a man threw me against the grate.
I always wanted more.
Once upon a time, a man pulled his punches.
A sound in the woods, a pickup truck.
I winced, a child. I pulled it, he said. It could have been much worse.
Women die anyway.
I wore a necklace of his hands.
Mostly I was ignored. One or two people stopped to check on me, but I waved them away.
I like to run past rows of houses, windows glowing yellow with life, someone inside to witness.
I wave them away.
Things I’ve seen in the woods: An indigo bunting. A hawk, feasting. A pickup truck. Roots. Bones. A pink shirt hung on a vine.
On the bike path. By the river. Under the freeway. Measuring stalks of corn.
Plucked from the road. Thrown in the back. Face on metal. Whose smile to trust. Whose eyes.
I might become a disturbance.
A necklace of his hands.
Melissa Benton Barker’s writing appears in Five South, Tiny Molecules, Bayou Magazine, Best Small Fictions, and other publications. She co-edits the flash fiction section at CRAFT. Melissa lives in Ohio with her family.
Image: “Morning Fog” by Alex J. Tunney
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