It came out of nowhere, like the limo that hit me on my motorbike in 2001. The truth is, it was my fault. I gunned the engine and shot out the alley onto the main street and got hit, hard. Look good, I thought, flying like Clark Kent turned into Superman, before I bounced on my skull a few times and landed on snapped ankle thirty feet away. After that accident, this peacock with tattered feathers hobbled around on broken leg, wiping out on San Francisco sidewalks as I moved fast and furious on crutches.
Yesterday I got caught running a stop sign.
Time mends all wounds, they say. After the accident, my head hung off to the side like a misguided scarecrow for years before a chiropractor finally knocked it back on straight in 2007. A jolt of energy moved up and down my spine. My head floated upwards as colors flashed bright and turned neon. My head that had been smacked off course got re-aligned in an instant. All my scars have softened. The ones from repairing broken clavicles and herniated discs have thinned and lightened. The raised red ridge across the center of my chest from top surgery a year ago will also flatten and turn pink.
Bubbles rise in your voice as fire meets water, a tea kettle screeching your arrival. It’s our first time sharing space since the night we merged and the day you abruptly pushed me away. Our nervous systems crackle, put me on edge. I cannot look you in the eye. I track you with sideways glances as you move about the party. The truth is you broke my heart little by little with your promises of more to come that always receded further into the distance until one day, you reversed course.
I keep careening towards the next destination, the next adventure, the next person I can lay this scar-filled body down and look up at the stars with. The ego still cares about looking good. The nervous system still speeds ahead. The heart knows it’s about slowing down, listening to the body and following signs that say yield or stop.
The truth is, it wasn’t anybody’s fault as we bounced and crashed into each other. I take space to get back into my own lane, to travel away from you. Time will tell if we meet in the cracks again or if all that’s left is a great divide, a chasm we cannot cross.