In answer to the Weekly Writing Contest–this week’s prompt was “getting where you’re going”–over at Soft Copy Publishing, I wrote the following:

Travails

One of these days it’s going to happen. When the line of cars grinds to a painful halt, and the traffic reporter chirps out the depressing news that we’re sitting, or inching along, with no end in sight. When all around me other commuters slop coffee into their mouths, or sit back to finish the breakfast sandwich with less forward movement and more frustration. When the lights turn green, mocking us as we sit unmoving, winking maliciously their columned eyes.

It’s not as if I long for the desk, the work, the co-dependent paper and screen. The cheap radio that only gets one station of mediocre music played on an unchanging daily loop. The slightly burnt smell of solder and the murmur of broken English from the workroom.

I would rather be at home, but it’s farther behind than the office is ahead. And I need, I really need the little bathroom, all mine because I’m the only woman in the office. Where in solitude and privacy I can boke up my breakfast in peace.

Because every morning in this car, I dread the day I won’t make it. And I torment myself with images of throwing open the door and losing it on the pavement, with commuters all around audience to the joys of morning sickness. One of these days. Could be today.