sometimes i wish
for that spectacular car crash
-the happenstance of metal
& horrific force-
to put me out
of everyone’s misery

i dreamt of snow and worms squirming to the surface finding only cold light and a bitter wind as my face cracked the ice i felt my lips harden and my teeth go numb and the worms dig their way back through the corners of my eyes frozen open

my daughter collects stones and fits them into my breast
pocket, such weight to unburden me

from hearing the roar, i’ve become it. what cold, cold solace. to become what you’ve always feared, impervious, detached, even my skin betrays me. another tool, weapon, gift, like muscle and bone, cheap tissue and cardboard, serrated knife and short iron pipe, keyboard and screen. just another thing amongst others. even worse to watch others as a series of machinations, expressions of complex equations, ultimately solvable. all reduced to a matter of time, desire and persistence. even my daughter, my son, clockwork, steady but their course is circumscribed. not to say i get no pleasure from them, or any of it, but this clarity of vision that i had once been able to turn on and off as needed reveals constantly inner workings as ratchets and gears and springs that can be plucked and tuned and reset, just like that. everything as “just like that.”
look at me, same as i never was.

i race the highway into twilight, blow out windows, tires, crash barrels explode, careen off dividers, sparks light the cigarettes in my shirt, my chest smokes, butt of my last wired into my teeth, let me tell you a story: once when i was young i drove mad just like this on christmas eve and late into the night, the reasons why are for another time, but on a turn like this at eighty, it all welled up and said, “enough” and i let go, i let go of my life, i let go of the steering wheel, and the car went straight as an arrow from right to left, from the slow lane to the passing lane, and the head lights were so bright, the concrete so clear, i could see where one segment met the next on the bend, the rust of the pivot, i was going to be right there, but it all shut down and said, “ENOUGH” and i could not feel my hands and yet there they were, jerking the wheel the other way, skidding rough across the shoulder, the bumper catching a piece of the divider, my shoulder slamming off the window, horns blaring or me screaming, and i whip the car back steady and somehow get off the highway and come to a complete stop until it finally gets quiet enough to breathe again.

no comfort anywhere, blunt and stupid, cored out rotten apple rolling onto the highway, crushed and smashed to chips for little hands, nimble fingers, no muscle, all bone, gingerly picking them up, juice running down a toothless grin

grit of a scab to be picked with fingers callused and bruised
the i-ching in his forearm says, and you’d do it again to feel anything
pattern recognition cracks the night a kaleidescope of skin and rust

and every word cast from our mouths, be it a stone hurled
through the window of their expectations or a precious gift
to be unwrapped by nervous hands or a spike meant to be driven
through thick skin, travels with momentum, travels and makes things
break, makes things out of thin air, makes the difference
between us and them, between mattering and disappearing
we owe the people that love us, not the other way around

every time i look in the mirror, for years and years now, since i was a child, since before everything and ever since, i find myself asking,
“and who are you there? who the hell are you?”