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Vittoria Vaughan

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Accident

Through the cracked and icy windscreen,
your body looked as if still sleeping,
cryogenically-frozen or huge and hibernating
foetus waiting for the twisted shell
of steel you’d once sweet-talked me into
letting you lavish all our savings upon,
waiting for it to push you perfect again
into the chill clutch of early morning.

From my bedroom window,
i’d seen it all before
it happened, almost,
that blind corner close-by
well-known to myself
and my new friends
for demanding its fair share
of eager strangers, for sudden losses
of concentration; and after all, it takes
just one fatal mistake, doesn’t it?

Who knows this better than i?
When being precise about directions,
when pointing out which hazards to avoid,
which slip-roads to take, i simply forgot
to mention this last stumbling block.

Some day, no doubt, i’ll get over it
or allow myself to wonder, ‘How could i
have failed to take you seriously once
the annulment was finalised, failed to see
your promise to visit was not yet another lie
scattered amongst those recent words of sorrow?’
Until then, let me rest in peace with a memory
for affairs of the heart conducted without my knowing
and of the dangerous ends you often went to
when trying to cover your tracks.

 

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