Betty Benson

That Time

my nineteen-year-old self rode from campus on a bus that stopped 50 miles short of where I was going to visit my sometime boyfriend whose name I don’t remember so I decided to hitchhike the rest of the way a car with a bunch of drunk-stoned people picked me up passed around joints Southern Comfort until I was buzzing too not so much that I didn’t notice how fast the car was going not in the right lane but moving over the double yellow line into the left lane as it passed a row of cars—one—two—three—four—five—by then we were all counting though we stopped when we realized we were on a hill with another car coming toward us over that hill the weird thing was I knew we were going to crash time turned elastic stretching out so I could hear the wind like angry wings flapping in the open windows I could even see my parents sitting at home ignoring each other not thinking of me though they would wonder what I was doing in the middle of nowhere with strangers I was pretty sure they would miss me if they stopped blaming me this is where there is a collision of memory-truth I can still see terror in the eyes of the other driver as he drove at the very last second into the ditch turned over—over—over—over I want to believe he jumped out to shake his fist at us we were driving away our driver was laughing I was shaking really shaking so much shaking the guy next to me in the backseat said I can feel your body shaking I was shaking not because we almost crashed I was shaking because that time was the first time I knew really knew how easy how possible how very possible it would be for the world to go on
without me

Betty Benson is a poet and writer living in Minnesota. Her work has appeared in RockPaperPoem, Glacial Hill Review, The Best of Choeofpleirn Press (2023), and others. She was a 2023 finalist for both the Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor and for the Derek Burleson Poetry Prize.