“What You Fear The Most” by Karen Dietrich

Nighttime drive home, I’m high on April air

and that feeling of this-is-almost-the-end.

The kids stand outside Sunoco, headphone wires

stretched between them, child-sized telephone poles.

Who can remember practicing their phone voice?

The many ways we answered, the many hellos.

Our words were music, rhythms

hanging in the air after we spoke.

We didn’t even know who was calling.

Karen Dietrich is the author of The Girl Factory: A Memoir (2013).  Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, Joyland, Main Street Rag, PANK The Bellingham Review, and elsewhere.  She teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA program at University of Arkansas at Monticello.  She lives in Greensburg, PA and is currently at work on a novel.  Visit her online at karendietrich.net.