There were often magazine stories about kidnappers in those days. My mother read them all, although they took place in faraway cities, and nobody we knew had ever been kidnapped.

One day when my mother and I were taking a walk, she felt one close behind us. A real live kidnapper! She whispered to me to run as the kidnapper chased us through the downtown streets, getting ever closer and closer, so that her hand clutched tighter and tighter and I could feel my feet being lifted off the sidewalk, my heart racing inside my chest. All the way to the front door of the Super Burger, where my mother pulled me inside, all warm and moist with cooking, and we took two stools at the counter.

I dared a look behind me, my heart still beating fast, the door quivering from her rush and no one visible outside, as she held up one finger to the counterman and said: Two Super Burgers, please.

Dotty LeMieux

writes both poetry and poetic memoir. She has five chapbooks published, including two during the pandemic: Viruses, Guns and War (Main Street Rag, 2023) and Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals such as Gyroscope, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Poeming Pigeon, Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review, and Writers Resist, among others.

MacQueen’s Quinterly nominated her CNF Spring Trip to Mazatlán for Best of the Net 2024.