Body, Car, Water
I am in the backseat of a station wagon, and I feel like a crime scene about to happen, like tender skin, you can already feel the bruises rising from, like a flock of birds who know when it’s time to come home. I can hear them rolling out the yellow tape, it is Death’s variation of teenagers scratching into tree trunks and walls to say, “I was here.” The car walls stiffen with the click of the car keys like a belt going up a notch and the air feels thinner like I could poke it like a paper with a wooden pencil and enter another dimension, even the slit leather beneath my body tenses like a quivering muscle before an immunization shot, full of unaccommodating anticipation. The car walls nudge in closer and folds itself away into a corner like a vagrant dog who hides under the back deck when it knows it’s about to die. It feels like origami, a swan, an origami paper swan. I hear the officer say “DOA” just as a floppy-haired intern shows up