The Accident

Not books this time. I felt ready to share this poem properly.

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The summer of my thirteenth year

Was mostly hospitals.

Some series of events like miniscule knots

Turning time till the boat hit him.

It tried to take his surgeon’s arm

and nearly took his life

but the same knotted thread that

wrenched

the world off its tracks

let us bring him back to port.

I say “us”, but that’s a simplification.

Truth is I was asleep

when his blood was mixing with the Mediterranean.

You’d think love would be strong enough

to shudder the web we share

but he’d already been to the brink and back

by the time I heard.