time is moving past, quickly, a sneak attack on this moment, this right here right now, turn and blink stupidly and now is no more, turn and blink stupidly, you are no more, a new creature stands here now and in turn, turns and blinks stupidly, and so you all tumble down into the refuse pit of lost nows forever falling away just as you blink and understand...

"holy shit, that car's going to hit me!"

blink stupidly, or it might be a tear, the only one you'll have time for, blink once and before another, before the breath needed to scream, your prediction is manifested in pain that probably is not real because this is not real, cars do not aim at you straight at you like in a movie, blink into pain that is silent and everything else that happens is pure melodrama until at last the drugs and shock rub away consciousness and a form of sleep provides an excuse not to be here for a while.

and the children weep, mommy mommy

your ex gets a call and comes to take the kids to his place even though grandma's anger and fear needs the comfort of these little ones, but all of that is happening in now, time and energy and thought and feeling, now, waiting with open fangs to chew you when you wake, claws and bitter hard teeth (kiss me my sweet lovely, it lies) when you wake back into now but that is now and you are hidden safely ... for now ...

they caught the bastard right away, it was easy what with a dozen witnesses and the front of his car stained with your blood and smashed with a variety of interesting shapes created by merging his car, your car, and your body in-between. he wasn't trying to escape, he had finished what he had come to do, kill you for being a fucking bitch cunt, idiot code for everything wrong in the world of his mind and heart and you are to blame for all of it all of it, you are to blame, freedom comes he realized on what the police would later determine was his tenth boilermaker by eliminating you and how easy how right just to smash you down with his car, the one thing in the world he knows he can love safely painlessly, his safe place his weapon his reasonable alternative to choices he is not going to make, catching this nut job was too easy and you only see him one more time, the one day you have to go to court to testify and then he's gone for seven-and-a-half years. his brother keeps the car for him, and when he gets out, he gets in and drives to some part of east texas where no one has any desire to look for him.

you fall asleep under the sedative and he disappears from your life forever. this is another good thing.

and despite all the truly interesting things you have to do for months and months, you stand one day, propped on canes that you grip firmly muscled hands and arms stronger than you could ever have imagined, and it isn't really a noise that matters but you hear it and turn, blinking stupidly, but this time there is no really big now nothing happening to interupt and you stand and blink again blink again blink again until it's no longer stupid and awkward but upright turn breathe there's time and you do it, breathe, blink, breathe, blink, it's not stupid it's now this time it's now and even though times of greater interest and meaning lie ahead and behind, this is a breath you intend to enjoy and as your eyes blink closed for that partial second the muscles in your diaphragm respond and you breathe and the moments continue and now and now and now now now now