I woke up drowning
in the sleek black ocean
of unfamiliar pavement.
The cries of worry,
sorrow and shame
bled together as one.
I was asked questions
in what seemed like strange tongues
and responded with foreign answers.
And then, suddenly,
the road swallowed me whole,
like a pill, with no water.

I woke up floating
in the bright ambience
of an unknown struggle.
Needles prodded,
strangers argued
and loved ones watched on.
Confusion set in,
'Did I do something wrong?'
they told me just to lie still.
And then, abruptly,
the morphine surged
and the night fell away.


I woke up relaxed,
the I.V. saw to that,
as did the OxyContin.
Five stitches,
one for each separate time
my body bounced against the blacktop.
A fractured skull,
splintered like a rotting stump
struck by the dullest hatchet.
A broken leg,
encompassed in a new kind of boot,
for once on the receiving end of support.

And now I'm confined to the shrunken world
I map out with each small, slow step.
It seems I'm to die of boredom
rather than in the middle of Round Lake Boulevard.