Between Jobs

by Diane LeBlanc


Such time and space didn’t exist
in our yellow house on Franklin Street
where my father’s clean uniforms lived
in a narrow closet like a spare dad.

We measured week days in diesel grunts—
his truck leaving, his truck returning—
then Sunday in hours dripping 
into pot roast gravy. 

I still see him standing at the sliding window
of the creemee shack where I twirled vanilla 
soft serve onto a sugar cone, his pride and pity  
enough to melt my first lopsided effort.

And there he is at the door of my grad school office
snapping a picture of me sitting at a desk 
stacked with work that he drove 
two thousand miles to see.

In therapy after a stroke, he unbuttoned 
sentences one word at a time then stripped
his tongue to hope learning to say
when I go back to the shop. 

The molting I feared now ruptures my seams,
my torn skin a parachute as I leap into
a divide where no one waits with some cash 
and fistfuls of unspoken faith.  


* * * * *

Diane LeBlanc is a writer, teacher, and book artist with roots in Vermont, Wyoming, and Minnesota. She is the author of The Feast Delayed (Terrapin Books, 2021) and four poetry chapbooks. Poems and essays appear in Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. Diane is a holistic life coach with emphasis in creativity practice. She is a professor and writer in residence at St. Olaf College. Read more at www.dianeleblancwriter.com.