While Driving Your Daughter

By Jennifer L. Freed

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It will hurt you, what your daughter hints
she told her therapist. 

Let go of it.
This is not about you.

Your child burns with venom. 
All you need is for her to stop hurting 

herself. To stop wanting to 
hurt. If she blames you 

for the scorpion, the snake, 
the spider, for the world

that shelters them, 
then let her, for now.

For now, bless these sullen drives
to sleepover, school, therapy. Bless 

the weighted air you share inside this car. 
Bless her hints and jabs, 

from which you shape the outlines 
of those dark, barbed things

she hides beneath her tongue.   

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Jennifer L Freed’s collection, When Light Shifts, exploring themes of identity, health, and care-giving, was a finalist for the 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Prize and the 2025 Medal Provocateur, and was short-listed for the 2025 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. Recent poems appear in Atlanta Review, Rust and Moth, Sheila-na-Gig, Vox Populi, What the House Knows, and others. See Jfreed.weebly.com.

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