Meet Me At The Grocery

I worked for 11 years as a domestic violence counselor and transported many women to the shelter.

While other people push carts full of pop tarts,
I stop my car next to a woman.
Jane Doe?
She nods.
So I lug her garbage bags from her friend’s trunk into mine.
This is everything she could carry.

She trusts her child to my back seat,
though she still doesn’t know my name.
I will drive her blindly
to a safe place
where she’s never been.

Meanwhile other women circle,
clanging their metal carts into return stalls,
loading their dinners into their SUVs,
Oblivious
that they have just witnessed
a woman’s escape.