the last time i waited for life, it hit me like a car crash.
glass ground into dust, bones playing off each other like
a skeletal rockshow; i was a human kaleidoscope.
when i finally opened my eyes again, i saw clouds in
the cracks on the sidewalk, found pieces of myself
smashed into concrete like a chalk-drawing anatomy.
skin met ground easily, like it always belonged there.

life must be the hit-and-run type, because i never saw
its eyes leave the road ahead; i never even saw it look
back. accidents happen, they will say, when they find me
unfolded like a street art snow angel. and maybe they do.
but more likely, the car windows were obscured by dirt
or the roads gave up on storing rain for the springtime.

or maybe it’s just me, a permanent fixture of boulevards
that smell like regret and missed chances, trying to predict  
changing street lights like they are signals for starting over.
just another halcyon disaster zone, entertaining the collision
of twin headlights on skin, the iceberg that devoured a ship
just for declaring that it had dreams to carry across the sea.

i will never stop turning myself inside out to see if the future
is something inscribed on dna, to watch the pieces of my soul
bleed into each other like wax in a technicolored lava lamp.
i will never stop filtering life through a maze of mirrors and
colors, tilting it this way and that until i can turn the pieces
of broken glass into keys that fit the lock of an escape car.

i will never stop.