Wrought & Found

Original poems and found images.

~by Mia Sara

The Black Isle

How many others, at this very minute, are sitting in a dark
kitchen with a cold cup of coffee? I can’t help but wonder.
It’s not my first cup. There was that double espresso I had
after dinner, before driving home in the dark, knuckles white,
night vision sketchy, counting the ways I’ve yet to fail my
son. It was too strong, but I gave up sleeping sixteen years

ago, and faulty vision, all that squinting in the dark, reminded
me of another drive, the one where it took me nine hours to get
from the town of Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, up north to
Inverness. A drive that should have taken four hours, tops, in
the spanking new, navy blue station wagon, with my baby boy
swaddled up tight in his car seat, howling, and me singing

‘Old MacDonald Had A Farm’ because that’s what you do
when your kid is crying in the backseat, but also, this being
Scotland, there really was a farmer called Sean MacDonald,
and he had a farm across the firth from Inverness, in a place
they call The Black Isle, and that’s where they were expecting
us for dinner. We had set off at sunset, which happens right

after lunch in Scotland, in December, so it was already dark,
and I was exhausted, as all new mothers tend to be, trying to
keep my eyes from crossing, as the motorway narrowed into
country roads with single lanes and signs posted in Gaelic. I
was too afraid to stop, too afraid to admit I might be lost, too
afraid to see the truth, right in front of me, or glaring up from

the bottom of the 3 am coffee cup, so I just keep driving, and
singing, waiting for the moment I know is coming, just now, or
now now, piloting this Mothership, doing my best to see the road
ahead, when I pull up to the farmhouse, past midnight, relieved
to find the kitchen lights are on, all of them, illuminating my
hand as I reach for the key, and my face as it dawns, always too

late, I am driving in the dark without turning on my headlights.

***

Mia Sara is an actress and poet living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in poemmemoirstory, Pembroke Magazine, The Write Room, PANK, Cultural Weekly, The Kit Kat Review, Forge, The Dirty Napkin, St. Ann’s Review, among others. For more please visit: http://wheretofindmiasara.tumblr.com/