This road that punctured my skin
Injecting venom into my viscera
How it stopped me on my path
And brought death so close
That I had to stop living and breathing
And just be in the flickering twilight
Where language lost all meaning
Where love lost all feeling
Where time lost urgency
Where will lost all power

Too scared to move as the creature
Wrapped its head around my world
And sprayed its stream into my every limb
Rendering each lifeless and flaccid
I knew not life
I knew not joy
I knew not me

No pain I felt except in thought
As numbness now coursed through
My each and every fiber of my being
Freezing everything and everyone about me
Paralyzing me in my poisoned pool of me
Others could not see because I did not show
Others could not hear because I did not speak
Others could not know because I did not educate
As what I called life was sucked out my veins

No crises answered could they try
As this road’s fangs were mine to remove
From my violated flesh though this beast
Not an enemy to be once removed
But instead placed gently on a heated rack
For it to bask so that I will always know
The lessons it had brought in changing me
From that someone I had once been
And no longer need to be

Copyright © 2018 by John David Higham: All Rights Reserved
Photo: Sky, Land and Road Through Windshield (Windfall, 2018)