How the Year Ended

It’s not every day you cartwheel over the hood

of a 2006 Chevy Impala, gray, but if it’s January

7th of your 18th year, that year you avoided

your reflection in shop windows because they

were all funhouse mirrors, that year you thought

to be a hero meant bullying strangers online,

that year you convinced yourself you could

feel that extra half pound and that one too,

then you will cartwheel over the hood of a 2006

Chevy Impala, gray. In the moments before disaster,

you’ll face the 15-degree chill, not including the wind,

to get to the bus stop, wearing two pairs of sweatpants

and two pairs of gloves, and you’ll have to repeat

some mantra to yourself, something like “I am so

at peace and so confident,” or “I pledge allegiance

to the flag,” or “Lizzy Borden took an ax and gave

her mother 40 whacks” just so your brain won’t wander

and your vision shift so you’re viewing yourself from

above as you trudge along the salt-and-sand-stained

sidewalk of Main Street. The mantra will slip,

so you’ll pick up your pace, forget about ice,

an attempt to shake that hurt that can’t appear

on any X-ray or MRI, though your doctors have

looked, and you’ll round a corner beside the

cemetery, chasing yourself and watching yourself

chase yourself watching yourself chase yourself,

and then out of the corner of your chill-sealed

eye, like a suburban mirage, there it will be,

that 2006 Chevy Impala, gray, glinting in

the January sun like a salmon in runoff, and its bumper

will make contact with your left leg, and oh, there’s

your brain back where it should be as you cartwheel

over the poor guy’s hood, distraught as he pulls

out of the cemetery, and you’ll land on the other

side like the sly little cat you are and give a

gymnastics salute, your routine a perfect 10,

and walk off into the afternoon intact, fine, really

in a way that would appear on an X-ray or MRI.