I don’t remember what happened
                                                              before,    
except,  as I lay on my back
on the asphalt,
I dreamt I was still shopping
                          for a raincoat
             for my husband.

I’d carried my two-year old past
a donut shop,  where
policemen sat beneath
             garish lights.

How it troubled me,  to hear
that woman
             screaming the name
                          of her son.

The doctors say I was lucky.
The accident:  a hit and run.

And now time drifts
           and I float on it
like a paper boat
                          down a storm sewer.

More than likely,
nothing that precedes
           the five minutes before
the five minutes before
                          an ambulance siren
can ever be erased from the brain’s
gray matter,
           its cache and sieve.

And I,  almost happy—
as if listening to
                          wind-fed
           rapids
rushing down rock faces—
            foam frothing,
                    swollen.

I recall asking the medic
           if my legs were gone,
or were we at the airport on stand-by.