TOTAL LOSS

The impact isn't the part that scares you.

It’s the silence right before,

the split second where the world holds its breath

and you realize the brakes are just a suggestion

you no longer have the authority to make.

​Falling for you was a loss of traction.

It was the pavement turning into glass,

the steering wheel becoming a circle of prayer

as the headlights carved a path

through a dark I thought I knew how to navigate.

​We didn’t just meet;

we intersected at high velocity.

There was no exchange of insurance or pleasantries,

just the sound of glass becoming glitter

and the sudden, violent geometry

of two separate lives trying to occupy

the same space at the exact same time.

​They tell you to watch for the warning signs—

the flashing yellows, the "Reduce Speed" signs—

but your glance was a green light

that stayed on until the moment of contact.

​There is a specific kind of darkness

in the cabin of a rolling car.

It’s the smell of burnt rubber and gass,

the way that gravity forgets its own rules,

and the sudden, terrifying intimacy

of shared debris.

Our secrets didn't come out through conversation;

they were ejected through the glass of windshields and wipers.

My history became a spray of salt on your highway.

Your fears became the shrapnel

buried in my passenger seat, 

And everything was quiet.

The witnesses will stand on the shoulder and call it an accident,

as if we didn't both choose to be on this road.

As if we weren't both speeding

toward a collision we mistook for a U turn.

They see the smoke and the jagged edges

and they wonder how we survived the physics of each other.

And when they finally lean in to write the report,

they will see us sitting in the center of it all,

mangled, brused, hurt but hoplessly together.

Unable to see the silence in the center of the wreck.

​And they will call it a Total Loss.