A collection of poetry
Poems of Love, Longing, and the Things Left Unsaid
Valerie Bargy
About the book
These poems follow a daughter across the miles between her and her father: the calls from truck stops, the empty chair at dinner, the hug on the gravel at the edge of the road.
Between love and silence sits everything neither of them knew how to say. Valerie Bargy writes that space with a plain, steady hand, and leaves a light on for anyone who has ever waited at a window for headlights.
From the pages
He smells like diesel and clean cotton, a green shirt rolled to the elbow. I hold his hand the way you hold a rail on a bridge you already know is safe. The engine ticks as it cools. Neither of us checks the time. This is the whole of it: a road, a truck, my head against his arm.
The phone lights up at two a.m., a truck stop in a state I can’t picture. He asks if I ate. I ask if he slept. We both say yes. Somewhere the highway keeps unrolling under a radio turned low, and I count the exits until Friday the way other kids count stars.
There are sentences I keep folded in the glovebox of my chest. I love you. Don’t go. Take me with you. They ride all the way to the driveway and stay there, engine off, while he lifts my bag and I say, drive safe, and the dark says the rest.
Some things are only ever said in the rearview mirror.
From The Trucker’s Daughter
Letters from the road
A short note when there is a new poem, an excerpt, or news about the book. Nothing more than that.
