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 oen'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 holds 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 run down her face.
My office door now wears 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.
A decade, or two, or three.
They've come out with a new design
Bars and bags front and behind.
My fate now an impossibility.
Safely packaged hurtling down
The highway hardly makes a sound.
My lover very much alive
Arms wrapped now around his wife.