Mary Lou Buschi

Spotting

I found myself in the passenger seat of Colleen McGowan’s car doing donuts on the grass in the make-shift park hidden by overgrown Bayberry—Janet Jackson’s Pleasure Principle on volume 10. I had always thought Colleen was one of the quiet ones, not like the girls who ran through the hallways owning space. Yet, there we were spinning, fueled on volume and speed. My home felt just like that spinning car. I survived by learning to spot. I fixed my gaze on the lower right-hand crack in my bedroom window while the details of my brother’s disappearance flashed. I knew if I shut my eyes I would fall but today I told myself to let go. Lean into the spin. Watch as the world became a vertiginous swath of colors. Maybe we’d hit a tree, wreck our faces on the windshield, run our fingertips over the embedded glass splinters. It’s better you know now what I thought was happiness was only part-time bliss. And just like that, Colleen pulled the car out of the spin and drove into the straight away.

Mary Lou Buschi holds an MFA in poetry from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and a Master of Science in Urban Education from Mercy College. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals such as FIELD, Willow Springs, Indiana Review, Radar, Thrush, Tar River, Cream City, Rhino, The Laurel Review, among others. Her second full length collection, Paddock, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021.