& there wasn’t snow on the ground yet

just ice & shards of broken glass frost delicately clinging

to blades of grass the car upside down in the ditch ringing

in her ears one sock foot standing on the stub of a burnt-out cigarette

this was a time for second chances clouds of exhaust lingering wet

in the air, a 16-year-old girl learning how to live in the stinging

of skin open to a crisp fall morning flashing headlights bringing

nothing but a fresh bright hurt as the road began to forget

she was ever there the worst wasn’t the crash it was the phone call the mother

on the other side of one bar of LTE whose hands started to shake & wouldn’t

stop for days & the junkyard pulling pennies from the floor another

heap of garbage hemorrhaging money like oil windows that shouldn’t

have had to break there was a stillness in the ditch & in the other

timeline she didn’t climb out of the wreck & the street stayed silent.

Katy Masterman is a College fourth-year majoring in Creative Writing.