Painted Turtle
Gretchen Marquette
Summer road the ring around the lake, we drove mostly in silence.
Why aren't I your wife?
You swerved1 around a turtle sunning itself.
I wanted to go back. To hold the hot disc of it and place it in the grass.
We were late for dinner.
One twentieth of a mile an hour, I said. Claws in tar2. You turned the car around.
Traffic from the direction of the turtle, and you saw before I did, the fifty bones of
the carapace,
crushed roman dome3, the surprise of red blood.
I couldn't help crying, couldn't keep anything from harm.
I'm sorry, you said, and let it hurt.
The relief, always, of you in the seat beside me, you
