a month ago, i got in a car accident that totaled my car.
i was making a left turn at a stoplight
and the driver of an suv was paying no attention to her red light.
she barreled into the front end of my car at full speed before i even saw her coming,
and then everything was shattered glass and metal colliding and screeching tires
and suddenly my airbags were puffed out like sinister clouds and my engine sounded like a death rattle.
when i opened the door to get out, the hinges grated like a scream.

but i wasn’t hurt.
i cried for six hours that day but i went to school the next one.
everything was fine.

it's just that since then, everything in my life resembles a car crash.

i smelled burning for weeks.
i still blink and see spiderweb patterns of broken glass.
i cried for two hours when i realized i lost the cd i made
just so i could listen to my favorite songs in the car.
when i hear the song that was playing, i have to turn it off.

my father picked up the shrapnel still on the street a week later
and gave me my charred, crumpled, unreadable gravestone of a front license plate.
he straightened it out and put it on my new car when we got it.

i broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago
and as i left i heard sirens from inside his house.
the day after that, i was talking to another boy
and his promises sounded like ambulances with no paramedics on board.

last week there was a fatal car accident half a mile from my house
and i couldn't breathe for the rest of the day after i heard.

i have to turn left at the stoplight where my own accident happened every day
and when i turn i clench my fists around the steering wheel
like it wants to tear itself out of my hands and maybe it does.

i still check left and right and left and right during turns
even when someone else is driving.

call all of this a reaction to trauma,
but honestly i don't know what's wrong with me.

all i know is i cried with frustration, immature, pathetic,
when my mother and my father couldn't find a new car.
all i know is i grieved for my ford focus
like it was my only friend in the world.
all i know is i keep talking about this accident
even though i’m even getting annoyed by myself
and my fingers on the keyboard sound just like the policeman's as he wrote up the report
as i perched on a plastic backseat, shaking, face covered with tear tracks,
waiting, alone, for my father to arrive so i didn't have to be an adult,
waiting, alone, for an explanation of why this happened to me.

all i know is everything in my life resembles a car crash,
and there are sirens in the distance,
and i'm still waiting for the smoke to clear.

the bottle is

the
bottle
is

the bottle is empty

had its contents been precariously dealt with
or
drop by drop assimilated?

assimilated?by the cloths of
silk pashmina cashmere
or the blackness of a tuxedo

i might never
ever
know, my father forgets

to the left

to
the
left

to the left of the bottle
is another bottle
quite smaller.

it is filled with
pink liquid
half full--or half empty

barely used by its
current owner
it smells like apples

and by the bottles is

and
by
the
bottles
is

and by the bottles is a ring
with two keys
that open locks somewhere

of COURSE!

why, what else would you
use a key
for?

the darkest
alternative for a key's usage, though
is to

hurt
some
body
with
it

metal
grinding the
skin

and the bottles

and
the
bottles

and the bottles thrown
the former can shatter
the latter houses a liquid

but,

but,
but,
but,

why?

he is home
he came
from siam yonder

shouts from the ground floor
heralded his return
smile escaped from my static face

call out
his name
thunder, rain

dark face
swivels to the left
five foot ten rises up from the plastic chair as dark as him

i
expect a hug
but lo

i am not a child, not anymore
a protocol of high fives replayed
and the traffic of words return to the highway of arsenal, chelsea, man city

i don't wanna hear her name
i don't wanna hear her name

you and me
you and me

just

impossible
utterly, impossible,

cannot i wish?

she doesn't know
nor you

only i

and i will never tell

but nevertheless,
you and her
bound to find
and me

me in the gutter

Rain patters on the window
hurricane winds whistle round about
my mind.
I hear the rain, amazed that the sun's rays
still fall to earth, warming and nurturing

Cocooned in a throw, I look at the room
I've lain in for three days in a pain of my making.
I've become a cliche, the madwoman in the attic
lamenting lost love, lost life.
Cruelty knows no bounds, yet it binds.

Rhythmically the rain batters at the panes.
I don't want praise, I like my malaise
I feel real when I feel pain
I lie slain on the floor, amidst the wreckage
of a marriage.

I've died over and over these last three days
I want to get up and comfort you
To tell you that your life will go on
Mine had to end. I'm sorry you found me
on the floor, tablets strewn everywhere.

Baby steps now my love
you knew I was broken,
there's only so many matryoshka dolls in the original
I'm still here my love, it's just better that
you don't see me, but I can watch over you.

Your heart is broken, filling with rain and tears
my heart and soul was broken when the ink was dry
on the paper declaring us over.
When I get up from the floor, I want you to listen to the rain and
know it's me, my ghost knocking at your door.