Crash.

prose poem

The phone ring was like a pistol shot

In the middle of the night, when the

Moon is cold as bare feet on a winter

Beach, where the only survivors are

Shells left last summer, too ugly

To pick up.

 

She’d seen it coming.

 

She’d heard it coming.

 

She’d known it coming in the way

That you feel a tornado hanging in

The air—thick and smirking—too

Humid and too still, just waiting and

Waiting for night to come to hide it.

 

But night couldn’t hide it from her.

 

She’d known it from the first day

He’d cracked the windshield on

A tree.

 

She’d known it from the first time

He’d lied about the bottles in the

Backseat, riding along, buckled in

Like a second, ghostly passenger,

Holding him ransom within his

Will.

 

She’d known it in the nightmares.

 

In the same nightmares interrupted

By the early December phone call:

The pistol shot to interrupt the lonely

Night.

 

She’d cried with the first ring of the

Phone; she’d cried and crashed onto

The floor like a shattered shell of

Glass.

 

There was ice on the roads

 

And the bottles still rode, grinning,

In his backseat.

Reviews

[Erin Sky]

wow! I have to say that my favourite line is "That you feel a tornado hanging in / The air-thick and smirking"

[Dressed in Poetry]

Oh wow. I love the symbolism and personification and metaphors and everything. It is just... amazing. Particularly the last sentence.

[M Lamont]

Great job in the images. Flow was good and kept me going trough the piece. I have read others who write where the last word of the sentence is the moved ot the first word of the next line. Takes a bit to get used to reading but seems to work here...especailly with the topic.

[Tessa Le Rouge]

for lack of a better phrase, Holy S**t.
this is really good.
in the words of a friend of mine:
its "mind-bottling". =]
all seriousness, it's really good.
scratch that. its great.
really great.
great job.