It’s not every day you cartwheel over the hood
of a 2006 Chevy Impala, gray, but if it’s January
7th of your 18th year, that year you avoided
your reflection in shop windows because they
were all funhouse mirrors, that year you thought
to be a hero meant bullying strangers online,
that year you convinced yourself you could
feel that extra half pound and that one too,
then you will cartwheel over the hood of a 2006
Chevy Impala, gray. In the moments before disaster,
you’ll face the 15-degree chill, not including the wind,
to get to the bus stop, wearing two pairs of sweatpants
and two pairs of gloves, and you’ll have to repeat
some mantra to yourself, something like “I am so
at peace and so confident,” or “I pledge allegiance
to the flag,” or “Lizzy Borden took an ax and gave
her mother 40 whacks” just so your brain won’t wander
and your vision shift so you’re viewing yourself from
above as you trudge along the salt-and-sand-stained
sidewalk of Main Street. The mantra will slip,
so you’ll pick up your pace, forget about ice,
an attempt to shake that hurt that can’t appear
on any X-ray or MRI, though your doctors have
looked, and you’ll round a corner beside the
cemetery, chasing yourself and watching yourself
chase yourself watching yourself chase yourself,
and then out of the corner of your chill-sealed
eye, like a suburban mirage, there it will be,
that 2006 Chevy Impala, gray, glinting in
the January sun like a salmon in runoff, and its bumper
will make contact with your left leg, and oh, there’s
your brain back where it should be as you cartwheel
over the poor guy’s hood, distraught as he pulls
out of the cemetery, and you’ll land on the other
side like the sly little cat you are and give a
gymnastics salute, your routine a perfect 10,
and walk off into the afternoon intact, fine, really
in a way that would appear on an X-ray or MRI.