PTSD at Fifteen

Coming around the bend at 100 miles per hour

in an SUV,

in an attempt to break the sound barrier,

in an honest effort to feel more alive than hail in June,

we fly off the pavement, careening into air.

I watch as our bodies catch, netted between this world and the next.

Unrestrained by belts,

unbeholden to gravity,

unbending to Newton’s Law,

we break, window glass raining in a torrent.

It isn’t her screams that reverberate and fill the tin can to suffocating.

It is the pounding from a space between my ears and eyes.

It is the beating where heart meets head.

It is a rip-roaring sensation to be alive,

as she bleeds out.