(December 16, 2022)
*
That violent, violating jolt.
The shudder diminished too fast,
As if a hand cupped the car to stifle it deadly still.
The lighted interior went pitch in an instant.
The Christmas carol was instantly obliterated by a tinkling of the glass
That was dropping away, our protection now projectiles.
It was accompanied by a smash, as if a thug was announcing his arrival.
The gods decreed a tensile metal be malleable,
Become an abstract art instead of car.
The airbags didn’t deploy.
Later, the Good Samaritans who came to the windows
Would inhale their air, amazed. Exclaim.
Instead, my life deployed, flashing fragments of cinema in fits and starts.
Even as I looked over at Russ, who was stunned, staring straight,
I was back to our beginnings in a bar, standing in a doorway searching for…him.
There he was, found him, a seated silhouette in the row, staring straight as if stunned.
The murk of the bar was punctuated by the constant pinging
Of pinball choirs, the whoops of players an intermittent descant.
I had sighted him earlier at Moby Dick’s in the Castro.
I thought he looked good, meaning, I thought he looked kind.
I follow kindness as if it were a trail of crumbs.
Glancing out, I noticed a tailing of broken glass surrounding
Both our vehicle and the black, spanking new pickup truck we had hit.
Russ was awake but mute.
“I had better check to see if survivors in the truck are injured.
I seem ok. Are you?”
Russ didn’t answer.
Wincing from a sore shoulder, knees wobbly, once outside the car,
I realized we were not crashed in the intersection,
But rammed into a pickup parked in front of an elementary school.
Peeking into the black tinted windows, to my relief,
No one was inside.
Children, along with their adults, played on a nearby field, oblivious.
Not so the witnesses who approached me tentatively,
One from the sidewalk, one from the street.
“I called 911,” said the one. “They will send the medics,” said the other.
I walked myself over to Russ and sat on the bar stool facing him. Obvious? Very.
He looked at me slyly, lit up a smile. Then, he became a silhouette again,
Staring into air, trying to decide. Within minutes there would be a new year.
Within minutes sirens materialized into uniforms wanting a statement.
Russ was ready. He told them he wasn’t sure what had happened.
Later, he told me he had swerved, sparing a car taking off from the curb.
“Let’s take off,” he finally said to me, decision made.
It was minutes into 1981, the start of a lifetime together.
We walked into rain, the night punctuated by neon.
Little did we know we would be traveling all the way to tonight,
The rig all lights and sirens, Russ diagnosed with a brain bleed.
The ER was a horror: Patients on gurneys in the hall. Paramedics lined up at the door, bringing in more.
Noises from the sick and the demented.
Russ and I were partitioned off, spared, so to speak.
So, he spoke: “Stevie, thanks for being here.”
Overcome, I started to cry, silently. I couldn’t reply.
Instead, steadfast, I placed my hand into his. We were one man.
Not two. One.
*
Steven Golden
December 16-17, 2023
stevengoldenpoetry 