The Accident: Revised

The Accident: Revised

1.

“Well, it’s more or less true,” I say to you. Years and pain medications have dulled humid memories of the July day. “A fat man fell on my head —crushed me like a soda pop can.” And I stop, for this is the moment you usually giggle or look at me with pity or disbelief. This is my embarrassment: am I hung up on this old accident? Did soda pop can sound with a whine, a fizzle? Do seem desperate for attention, a hug? Cheeks burning, I find I rush queried details, bubbling: “I worked at a boat dock, and a guy who wanted to paddleboat fell on me, crushed my spine, so I couldn’t walk for a year.” Then, I stop and listen because I see you think of your own story— accident becomes adhesive. We are all bone, cells, mostly alone.

2.

We could always embellish, I suppose, with more gallant details. Well, “I guarded boaters’ lives and a large man dismissed my assistance; I was, after all, a woman, and he was entering a paddle boat. I assumed I offended his manliness. I did it all the time on the dock. Inevitably, the boat jostled him, and I cushioned his fall. I rolled him, unhurt, into the boat, and he paddled away with his companion. I, however, left in the shade, could not stand.”

That’s true. But, after a decade of therapy, recovery, re-injury, marriage, motherhood, and more re-injuries, it sounds cheesy. Embarrassing, perhaps, because for only one month I grieved my legs, doubted I’d ever walk again before a promising diagnosis―no more impressive or odd than your story, than other stories I’ve eavesdropped in doctors’ waiting rooms, airports, trains, post office lines, church, gym, office water coolers, department store dressing rooms, gas station bathroom lines. My ears swivel, gawk, search for shared experiences: survivors’ strength renews my body’s spirit so that it might bubble to surface each morning.

3.

In fact, on rare days when I wake to no pain, I disbelieve it myself.

Tall and able, I forget distinct smells of sun block, menthol, metal, sweat, uncoated

aspirin. When I talk with you, they ambush me, leave me weary of re-injury, make me

cautious and careful for a week. I’ve gotten better, mostly. Maybe you haven’t.

Accident lingers, reminds me of eggshells, our bodies protected only until impact

breaks us. My dreams begin with perspiration, anxiousness for shift’s end, smell of rotting duck weed,

bob of a yellow boat, my hand empty, floating dimly in humidity.

Dreams end with great weight upon my body. A moment when everything is wrong.

Then, a moment of happy fizzing in my chest, when I push his body into the yellow boat,

and the odd couple paddle off. Finally, a wave of pain

when I lift my dangling legs to the dock. Panic lonely in every pore,

which echoes mornings and sleeps in my periphery until you wake it with your story

and it rises, grumpy and eager, to find another accident to reflect itself in, finally, it’s found company, for a moment—