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Cheryl Snell
Thoughts in the Time of Collision
I am all hair, glittering with diamond-glass. A forehead streaked with blood, rubies and roses crisscrossing the tangerine flaps of a ripped collar. Ripped skin. The air is blue and then bluer and then green and then black. Black is absence of color, white the sum. When I come to, a mangled fender dangles halfway through the windshield, inches from my face. When he sees it, my brother bursts into big pearly tears. Why is his arm on wrong? He is all geometry. Triangles and spinning circles. Mouth an oblong of cries. He was never the brave type and I don’t know where to look except into my own reflection, bleeding in the overhead mirror. I lift the visor high and watch the patterns of trickle. They fascinate me more than the fantasy of rescue. It’s in the way the tributaries join together at my chin. The way they drip off it like a cliff. How they spill drop by drop into the valley between my breasts.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in On the Seawall, Midway, Rogue Agent, Blue Unicorn, 100 Word Story, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology.
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