-White-
-White-
by Jessica Tedder
The muffled buzz of the broken heater. Christmas lights. Flicker, flicker, behind flecks of wet on my windshield. Waiting. Someone will come, soon, to assist me out of this ditch I seem to have fallen into…
I wonder. How many assume that someone, not them, will leave highway traffic to help me? How much slower will they go, without ever really stopping? Each unit allowing ten seconds of coming to terms with death, before they forget again.
And pass.
Wonder, what kind of person they imagine lay, clad in machine, at the bottom of a ditch. How many think that all the life that could possibly be contained within a1999 greenish-blackish Toyota Corolla isn’t worth ten minutes of theirs? What do they tell their children upon passing? Nothing. Hush. Their tiny brains go back to building safe neuroconnections, breathing in the static of the built in TV of their 2006 Toyota Sequoias.
I am the machine I use. Not the flesh inside.
How many? Minutes. Sailing past in this silent cocoon of white. Serenely contemplating death. White, there is. White and red sap. The white trickles down the window over my head, the red over my eyes.
How wondrously alone I am.
How many more minutes? Have they passed at all, or are they waiting too? I do not know. Either it is the lack of heat or I am getting
cold.
Nausea, upon shock. Consciousness
shut
off.
Beautiful lights, flickering. And sirens.
A snowstorm of cars floating past, indifferent; that is a gorgeous visual. Thinking of passerby’s in the traffic as apathetic as the weather, I found this especially moving. Transitioning from red tail lights into blood escaping confronts you to accept the reality of a crash. I felt alone reading this.
I like your poem very much.