Iris Ouellette
when you hit the tree I wonder if you knew you were dying
did you feel your body breaking,
blood, muscle, and bone ground to a fine pulp?
did you realize that at your memorial
there wouldn’t be enough of you left to put in a casket?
did you know?
i’d never seen a car wrapped around a tree before i saw the picture of you in the paper
someone told me on a childhood field trip that “pound for pound, wood is stronger than steel”
i could see that then
your car was three feet off the ground, crumpled around the trunk like aluminum foil
we all told you to stop driving so fast
i wanted to put something of yours at the crash site
i’d seen the small memorials left by the side of the road for other people
but never had a person of my own to remember
broken glass, bolts, springs, washers littered the ground around the tree, its bark stripped away
i searched for an echo of you
for blood or bone
i didn’t want to find anything
i told myself that
but my chest burned when you weren’t there