Taken
i. Above her, almost white sky scalloped by dark leaves. The car reeks of Camels. Her eyes burn. If she strains she can see a bald crown wreathed in smoke above her. Hands and feet tied with twine tingle, throb, go numb. Her gagged tongue swells. She wakes, sees not a dream landscape but headlights' gleam blazing trees' low branches. Will it help to picture sky blue eggs clutched in high safe places? To recall days the air shaking gold on parked cars shone as if flammable with grace? When, if ever, will You come rescue me? Three-in-One, can I be whole again? ii. God sees what she cannot- plexiglass sheets airborne from the truck ahead-how they plane through the air, catch the asphalt by edge, by corner, break into shards flying back like arrow flints piercing grill and wind- shield, driver's skull and chest, how the car swerves, catches a guardrail head on, guts itself, how she is thrown, swaddled with string, into unplanned birth. iii. Every birth is unplanned by the born, a rich gift they could not request, but must return on demand. She flew, not knowing why, from fire, from crushed metal, to laurel, shattered limbs in a fall of cupped blooms, lay flowered on the ground in pink-edged white, lay bound to the earth she had not yet escaped.