i’d rather not dwell on when yours will be gone

I was looking for Planned Parenthood in Boise when I totaled my car. I don’t know what I was paying attention to, maybe the odometer, street signs? But I wasn’t paying attention for long enough to look back to the road and oh my god clutchbrake not enough time to look back and change lanes giant construction truck is stopped in the middle of the road and now I’m crashing into it. Airbags, white powder, so much noise but in my memory it’s all silent, and then when it’s over screaming, screaming, feeling my body with my mind to see what’s broken. People at my car window immediately, how’d they get there so fast? Had to get out of that car. The white powder hanging in the air, the broken glass everywhere, had to open the door and get out but all of the people said no, no, we shouldn’t let her out of the car but I can feel that I am OK. Except that my collarbone really hurts, I look down to see and it looks like skin on top of bone that’s fine but feels like somebody applied a sander to it for a few seconds.

One of the construction workers gave me a red bandana. Is anyone hurt? I’m OK. No one’s hurt. My car is an accordian. Can’t stop crying because this is the end of my life, isn’t it? No more car. Can’t imagine telling my mother this has happened. Paramedics come and check me out but I’m OK. I know it, and finally they know it, too, and they leave. There’s a woman and her son getting me water and asking me questions and being there and being human and being warm. There are groups of people standing apart and looking at me, talking, who are all of these people? I’m angry. They can’t just stop a fucking giant steel flatbed truck in the middle of the road like that! With no signs! No lights! Just stopped on a road where cars are going 50 mph and I wasn’t changing my music or paying attention to the kinds of things you shouldn’t be paying attention to while you’re driving. But the cops assure me that it’s OK for them to stop in the middle of the road like that. There’s talk of a construction worker giving me a ride somewhere. The car’s loaded onto a tow truck, I need to grab my things… my longboard, some clothes. And people are disappearing, one by one. A worker assures me that they don’t believe in any funny business and they aren’t hurt so there ain’t gonna be any lawsuit or shit like that, I hear? Good. Good. I don’t believe in that shit either, although I can’t believe they just fucking stopped in the middle of the road like that. They could have stopped in that parking lot to put up their signs. They didn’t have to be in the road like that.

I wish I knew the lady’s address. She was so kind and she left and I’ll never be able to thank her.

The cops have gotten wind of the fact that I don’t live in Boise, don’t live anywhere, really, and one of them says to me that he might as well not give me a ticket because I’m not going to be around and I probably wouldn’t pay it, anyways.

I am really angry. I start screaming at him, that’s not fair, I’m not a second-class citizen just because I don’t pay rent, I work, I have a job that keeps teenagers out of his fucking jails, I am a human being and I have worth and you are a fucking asshole.

He apologized. He did. But he and his partner stopped trying to find a way for me to get home. They got into their cars and left. My car had been towed away. The construction company even picked up and left. Weren’t they working? How could they just leave? Did they just decide to go work on something else today? So I’m on a busy street corner, across from an Evangelical Superchurch, sitting on my longboard under a stopsign. Crying, crying, it won’t stop. Thinking about Brenda dying in an accident. Realizing how much fear she must have felt. Realizing that my body hurts. Seeing the flesh on my collarbone start to raise and redden and seep. Thanking the earth for providing me with a seatbelt and airbags, even though they were horrible, the white powder, the abrasion.

I’m OK. My life didn’t end.