Читать книгу Strangers - Rob Taylor - Страница 10

One winter, two a.m., his doctor’s

bad prescription setting in,

my dad went into shock—

my mom ten-minute-tumbled

his six-two, two-fifty tremble to the car,

the windshield scraped, ignition on,

before she caught a vision of my cherub’s face

tucked above my covers.

She scooped me up too quickly, swung

around towards the car, her ears

astounded by the sound as cherub-skull

thwacked doorframe. Then came the blood.

Then the startled screams from both our mouths,

the comic shuffle through sliding doors,

husband hooked on one arm,

jittering akimbo, son slung in the other,

an ornate fountain spurting purple

beneath fluorescent ER lights.

My head stitched up and all of us

in bed before sunrise, death’s

nearest pass (despite their fears)

had come as we careened our way downhill

in our clown car of misfortune,

my mother in the driver’s seat,

her right hand placing pressure on my skull,

her left gripped hard upon the wheel—

the story she now laughs about at parties

piling up around her like the snow

that fell that night, silently

and everywhere.