I died in a car crash two days ago.
Was unrecognizable,
When they pulled me from the gears.
No one's fault, no one's bottle.
No one's teenage pride
Or throttle.
Our innocence is all the worse for fears.
The other walked away alive,
Arms wrapped now around his wife.
My lover sits, the silent eye
In a hurricane of warmth and word.
My mother trembles with the sobs
Whose absence seems absurd.
My sister shouts to let her see
Through the cloud of crowd surrounding me.
My colleagues call for silence in my name.
I died in a car crash three months ago.
They burned me until I glowed
And crumbled to a fine gray sand.
Now I am nothing, everywhere,
Several breaths of strangers' air
And all thoughts ever written in my hand.
They plant my tree out in the yard,
It grows but takes the winter hard.
My lover puts a knife to wrist,
Says: tomorrow comes, hold on a while.
My mother tosses in the sheets
And dreams me holding my own child.
My sister plays our homemade tapes,
Laughs as tears stream down her face.
My office door now bears a different name.
I died in a car crash four years ago.
My tree drinks melted snow,
Just eight feet tall, a pale and fragile thing.
Bee stings, beaches, bright vacations.
Sunburnt high-school graduations.
A sparrow healing from a broken wing,
This year a glimpse of second chances.
Tiny apples on my tree's branches.
My lover hears the open wind
And crawls blinking into the sun.
My mother leafs through photographs
And thinks: yes, she was a lovely one.
My sister can't decide her truth
Asks aloud: what I might do.
In a conference hall my brief efforts engraved.
I died in a car crash a lifetime ago it seems.
Been a decade, or two, or three.
They've just released a new design,
Bars and bags front and behind.
My fate now an impossibility.
Safely packaged hurtling down,
The highway hardly make a sound.
My lover very much alive.
Arms wrapped now around his wife.