Last week, my car went into the shop
for a tire patch and came out
with a busted left wheel bearing –

if I had known it was going to come out more broken
than when it went in, I would have saved myself
$39.95. not that it wouldn’t have

been broken anyway but now they’re saying
it’s “not safe to drive” even though I have been
driving the forty miles to the city

and back for months on a broken
bearing and I’ve survived just fine so far,
but now I won’t take it past the gas station.

what is knowledge if not a crowbar
to the knees, a knife to the achilles
of unease? today my dad went in with a brain

tumor and came home with a broken heart –well
I say broken – 99% occluded – and now he’s scared
to leave the couch until his stent

placement next week. that’s seven days
to sit and wonder whether this breath or the next
will send his heart barrelling toward failure. forget

that the same body walked
the dog yesterday and drank a pot of black
coffee and drove to work. no, today he will gingerly eat

a stalk of celery and contemplate
whether he should risk a trip to the bathroom
or fill the dog’s water bowl.

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By AJ Donley

AJ holds her bachelor’s degree in English and her master’s degree in forensic psychology and thus is unduly obsessed with the intersections of the horrors of living and the beauty of words – or perhaps it is the beauty of living and the horrors of words. She is a queer Midwestern woman whose work has previously been featured in journals such as West Trade Review, Riverfeet Press, Subnivean, Juxtaprose, Writers Resist, and Phoenix Rising Review. You can find her on Instagram at @ajtrieswriting.