Click here to read more about my new novel Telephone of the Tree, which has received three starred reviews and is an Amazon Best Book of the Year.
When I was a kid my family went on a long road trip every summer: four kids spread here and there in the station wagon, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. Sleeping bags, pillows, car games like how many different states’ license plates can you spot. Night would fall and the sky filled with stars. Road signs flashed by. The squeak-squeak of wipers pushing back rain. Swish of tires, hum of engine. This was years and years before I took the wheel, years and years before I was responsible for anyone else’s life.
December, by Michael Miller
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,
down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.
Click here for more information about poet Michael Miller. Today’s poem is from his collection College Town, published in 2010 by Tebot Bach Press.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
Alison McGhee 
People often would ask the playful question, “Have you ever faced death?” The joker in me always immediately thought, “Every morning when I first look in the mirror!” BUT…the earnest me, still, clearly remembers the Driver’s Ed. behind-the-wheel, first time driving the two-lane highway and cars speeding toward me at 60 miles per hour, the same as me hurdling toward them. And only 5 or 6 feet, mostly, between us. That stuck. (A hiccup. A cough. A spilled cup of hot coffee. A heart attack. Too many drinks.–All just passing a few feet away.)
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