Afternoon Accident While Heading Back to College

The strong temporal bones can’t withstand
the flinging, crashing punch
of eighty-eight feet per second,
like being blasted by every hometown league pitcher
with a fast ball to the head at once.
In that second, the parietal bone
designed to protect
gets traumatized by shocks and jolts,
cracking, splintering, shattering.
Inside the cocoon of bone, the blood
bursts out, bruised and backed up,
brain swelling helplessly while the
mandible shatters, ejecting teeth,
torquing the maxillary bone,
clogging up nasal passages with blood
where breath should be.
The occipital bone connected to the spine
in dangerously casual waves of movement
now strains to be contiguous
against the forces of separation:
rocks along barbed wire fence lines,
low branches of cottonwood trunks,
sharp edges of culverts in ditches.
Caught in the fragile synapses threatened with
destruction are memories, moments,
scenes of sweaty sports competitions
and endless classes drilling
into that brain skills for
the future that’s jeopardized
by a second of fancy flight from a rolled pickup.

Rosemary Moeller