I crashed and I don’t
mean I fell asleep I mean
I crashed because a careless driver whose cell phone records indicated he
was in fact distracted
hit my car and left my mind to spin each time I got in like the way my body did when he hit me.
At first when I talked about this accident,
I found embarrassment in saying that I “crashed.”
I didn’t hit this man, he hit me.
But I’m now realizing / I didn’t crash my car but this juncture made my mind crash.
I crashed and I can describe it in the way that
I cannot physically get out of bed today because the blood that was splattered on my windshield looked like a soda can that had been forgotten and exploded in the freezer.
Yes, I was forgotten about.
By the man who hit me because he was fine
He was fine because each time he sits his mind doesn’t wander to his car spinning in a busy intersection in 5 o’clock traffic.
Each time he opens his freezer he doesn’t see the grape soda mark left
on a bag of freezer burnt frozen vegetables
even though the last time he cleaned it up he was sure he got the last of it.
He was sure he got the last of it.
Just like last night I was sure I would stop having the nightmare
I was sure it was over until I woke up tomorrow.
The dream where I walk into the morgue after the crash to identify his body but instead of his body under the blue sheet
It’s mine.
I don’t know how to compare the crash to anything else in this world.
Perhaps I should say that it’s similar to the way a sleep separates yesterday to tomorrow.
My life is separated between the moment where it all went wrong and the moment after.
My life is disunited by the bags in the freezer that are untouched
And the bags in the grocery store that have grape soda on the vegetables before they’re even in my cart.