Dear Drunk Driver

Most nights I could hear
horses clomping along
the deserted streets
on my way to working
the graveyard shift.

I reached the straightaway
just before the cemetery
when I saw you outpacing
my speed,
headlights disappearing
in the rearview mirror,

swallowed by the bite
of my bumper clenched
against asphalt like a vise.

Sober, I steered away
from the semi-trailer
parked on the shoulder,
the one you shoved
six feet with your
boyfriend's Jaguar.

It didn't feel like an accident,
bouncing between the door
and console, my right shoulder
thrown
forward,
thinking I'm being attacked
by the man knocking
on the driver's side glass,

more like the Malachi brothers
trashing Pinky Tuscadero's car
in the demolition derby
on Happy Days—
deliberate.

With oncoming traffic absent,
I spun onto some stranger's lawn.

Sorry about your grass
erased to mud from tire tracks.

Faster than freeway speed
in a thirty-five zone,
every bit of one hundred,
the officer noted.

Lucky I survived.

I didn't care I wouldn't get paid
for today, just glad I could walk
away,
didn't feel like working anyway,
my perspective fading to gray.

I also didn't care
the time it took medics
to pick shards of windshield
from your forehead.

I didn't care if the crash
impacted your good hair day,
or what blood type was streaking
your face with DNA,
or if it made your mascara flake,

because you left lipstick on rims
of too many shot glasses
at the bar called Captain Jacks
before you made the decision
to stick your key in the ignition.

Two feet from my work boots
your wreckage landed,

enough hair to fill a rubber band,
abandoned,

looking like a rag mop,
bludgeoned.

I didn't care how bad
responders struggled
with the jaws of life.

I just stared at your scalp
in the road,
mad.

Originally published in Write Under the Moon on Medium.