Liz Whiteacre

THE ACCIDENT: REVISED

1.
"Well, it's more or less true," I'd say.
Years and pain medications have dulled
humid memories of the July day.
"A fat man fell on my head
-crushed me like a soda pop can."
And I stop, for this is the moment
people usually giggle or look at me
with pity, horror, disbelief.
This is my embarrassment:
Am I hung up on decade-old accident?
Did soda pop can sound with a whine,
a fizzle? Do I beg desperate for attention,
a hug? Cheeks burning, I find I rush
queried details, bubbling: "I worked
at a boat dock, and a guy who wanted
to paddleboat fell on me and crushed
my spine, so I couldn't walk for a year."
Then, I stop
and listen
because I see you think of your own story,
tragic, destructive. Accident becomes
adhesive. We are all bone, cells, mostly alone.

2.
We could always embellish, I suppose,
with more gallant details.
Well, "I guarded boaters' lives
and a large man dismissed my assistance;
I was, after all, a woman, and he was entering
a paddle boat. I assumed I offended his manliness.
I did it all the time on the dock.
Inevitably, the boat jostled him,
and I cushioned his fall.
I rolled him, unhurt, into the boat,
and he paddled away with his companion.
I, however, left in the shade, could not stand."
That is true. But, after a decade of therapy,
recovery, re-injury, marriage, motherhood,
and more re-injury, it sounds cheesy.
Embarrassing, perhaps, because for only
one month I grieved my legs,
doubted I'd ever walk again
before diagnosis. No more impressive or odd
than your stories,
than other stories I've eavesdropped in doctor's
waiting rooms, airports, trains, post office lines,
church, gym, office water coolers, Macy's
dressing rooms, gas station bathroom lines.
My ears swivel, gawk
for shared experiences: survivors' strength
renews my body's spirit so that it might bubble
to surface each morning.

3.
In fact, on some days when I wake
to no pain, I disbelieve it myself.

Tall and able, I forget distinct smells of sun
block, menthol, metal, sweat, uncoated

aspirin. When I talk with you, they ambush
me, leave me weary of re-injury, make me

cautious and careful for a few days.
I've gotten better, mostly. Maybe you haven't.

Accident lingers, reminds me
of my eggshell, body protected only until impact

breaks me. My dreams begin with perspiration,
anxiousness for shift's end, smell of rotting duck weed,

bob of a yellow boat, my empty hand
floating dimly in humidity.

Dreams end with great weight upon my head, chest
and lap. A moment when everything is wrong.

Then, a moment of happy fizzing in my chest,
when I successfully maneuver the big body into the boat,

and an odd crippled couple paddle off.
Finally, a wave of pain

when lift my dangling legs to the dock.
Lonely panic in every pore,

which echoes mornings and sleeps
in my periphery until you wake it with your story

and it rises, grumpy and eager, to find another accident
to reflect itself in, finally found company, for a moment-

Liz Whiteacre is an Associate Professor of English at College of DuPage. She was awarded an Inglis Poetry House Award in 2010 and the Vesle Fenstermaker Poetry Prize for emerging poets from Indiana University in 2008. Her work has appeared in Wordgathering, The Bloomington Bugle, Etchings and The Prairie Light Review.