Two hands.
Two hands flagging me down.
Two hands coming at me from the side of the road
and I don’t know why they’re waving until the street lamp gets closer
and my body gets colder. Instantly.
Car smashed in the middle of the intersection.
The white doors are buckled inward
and the engine’s smoking sizzler
and the windshield’s crushed and splintered
and my body gets colder instantly.

I roll the window down
and the smoke comes choking
and the joke’s on me
because two minutes later
the cops pull up
but I can’t pull away
from the scene

it’s like I’ve entered a dreamland
where the land is made of glass
and everything that should be whole is shattered
and I’m praying that this won’t matter in the morning
I’m praying that this story won’t find its way on the news
because if I knew that someone had died here
I couldn’t live with myself
This crash happened seconds before I drove up
and it could have been me
sitting in the middle of that intersection
splayed out before millions on television
with my spine bent the wrong way
and my life draining from me
and the breath squeezing, blood trickling
into the gutter
and I’d be gone

Gone before I ever got a chance to live
Gone before my soul could give enough to the people I love
Gone before I ever shoved authority off its pedestal,
this poem is so literal
because I’d be dead.
My head spins remembering that I stayed
ten minutes late at work
My heart lurches
What purpose can there be in saving my life at the cost of another’s?

My body gets colder. Instantly.
My heart stopped pumping when the wheels of my car stopped turning
There is this burning in my eyes
but I can’t quite cry because I can’t quite feel sorry that someone else had died and not me
I can’t quite live up to my philosophy that we should love others more than ourselves
I’m being selfish, I know, but I can’t help but show how grateful I am to be alive

My body gets colder instantly.
My eyes dance across the scene of glass
that covers the ground like a thousand pieces of starlight
and the night has blinded the dead victim
and my mind catches on the thought that there might be one more person in heaven tonight
with sight restored in paradise

And it’s not me
and I can’t see why God is letting me live
The dice may have been thrown on my life that night
and I may have survived by a gamble
so I want to gamble every last minute away
because I could be slain by a drunk driver ten minutes after I leave this room
and the doom is impending, my death is descending
at the minute that I least expect it
but that fact is not sending me to my house, where I’m safe and sound,
no, it’s sending me down the streets of this town
to live large and free and to give people every last crumb of love I have
and I want to be myself instead of a mockingbird
and I want to start feeling like I’m meaning every word I say
and this day won’t go to waste
if I only taste a drop of adrenaline

My body gets warmer. Gradually.