The Road That Drinks Our Shadows
written by: Gloria Ogo
We paved it with old hymns and birth certificates,
but the asphalt keeps spitting them back—
half-melted social security cards blooming
into fireflies. The streetlights hum
a war song no one remembers learning.
(You’ll know the bend where time folds
by the way your teeth taste like radio static
and your mother’s voice.)
The bus stop eats three girls every winter.
Their braids hang from power lines,
still growing. We pretend not to see
how the strands braid themselves
into nooses or necklaces, depending
on which way the wind lies.
Last Tuesday, a sinkhole opened
where the school used to be.
From its throat floated up:
A rusted trumpet full of teeth
Every apology our fathers never swallowed
My childhood best friend, still eight years old,
her Sunday dress humming with wasps.
She offered me a jawbreaker.
“They’re making a new map,” she whispered.
“The kind that bleeds.”
We tried to leave once. Packed the car
with photo albums and holy water.
The highway unspooled behind us
like a tongue licking its own wound.
By dawn we were back
at Mama’s porch swing,
our pockets full of wet loam
and the last chorus of Lift Every Voice
stuck in the treads of our shoes.
(Turn left where the weeping willow
wears a police badge.
The soil there remembers
how to hold a body
without telling.)
Now we plant gardens in abandoned squad cars.
Tomatoes burst from bullet holes,
their seeds spelling out
the names we aren’t allowed to say
after dark. The children water them
with Gatorade and stolen hymns.
At harvest, we’ll eat the fruit raw,
let the juice run down our chins
like the truth no one will claim.
The road watches.
It always watches.
Its hunger is a patient thing—
blacktop and bible verses,
a mouth stitched shut
with power lines and promises.
We keep walking anyway.
Our shadows grow teeth.
Our footsteps sprout thorns.
Somewhere up ahead,
the pavement softens
into something that might,
if we pray sideways,
finally let us pass.
- The Road That Drinks Our Shadows - May 14, 2025
