by Susan Morehouse

A car sticks in the muddy driveway across from my house. Acrid smoke and spinning wheels. We are coming from the end of the street, the dog and I. You need a push? I call.

The guy’s smile is a broken comb. What kind of dog? he says, spinning.

Golden retriever, I say.

I thought Irish setter, he says.

Golden, I say.

I’m rocking it, he says. His breath makes me dizzy.

The dog leaps, pulling against the leash in her mouth. It’s a game: like running away, like driving drunk, like any of the ruts we dig for ourselves.

Susan Morehouse’s short essays and flash fiction have appeared most recently in New Ohio Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Star 82, and Phantom Drift. She teaches creative writing at Alfred University in western New York, where she also directs the Young Writers Institute.