The Dashboard Clock is Blinking Twelve

the stereo is too loud to sing over,
just loud enough to be heard over the engine.
a world passing by beyond the windshield,
wipers blazing a staccato beat.

a sudden collapse,
not with a bang,
or a screech,
but with a deafening silence

as everything shuts down at once:
the stereo.
the engine.
the power steering.
the breaks.

and in that silent moment,
as the car hydroplanes toward a telephone pole,
the distant squeak of leather gloves in a white-knuckled grip on the wheel that won't move,
and the scraping sound of the brake pedal grinding clean into the floor,
both seem muffled by the silence,
a hundred stifling pillows, enough to smother.
and in that last moment before steel meshes with wood,
the muffled click, clunk, grind of the gears being forced into park.

nothing but a heartbeat that rattles the skull, and shallow, rapid breathing for a moment


then a chorus of manic laughter,
cutting the stifling silence with goosebump-inducing precision.


the sound of near misses.