Accident & Aftermath

We counted down and dove into the lake holding our breath at the sudden rush of an oncoming tree silhouetted against a blood orange November moon making every shard and scrap of jagged metal shine as the car shrieked across wet blacktop soared up and over a hard concrete culvert and then tumbled into a tarantella accompanied by the mandolin I had played weeks before on a friend's front porch where we sat laughing at the dog from down the street twitching and salivating at the smell of ribs smoking on the grill and burning rubber stung my eyes as my hands scraped in the dark soil bloodied by the glass in my arms and back shattered in the street littered with leaves of the pecan tree I climbed as a child pretending I was a cop directing traffic to a detour away from the car resting on its back with wheels slowly turning like the legs of the turtle my father and I caught while fishing before I slowly slipped into the stream of consciousness flowing back toward the warm home of the womb.