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It was an admirable dive, technically haphazard but stylish, like good slam verse, and confident, despite daunting conditions, including absence-of-a-swimming-pool. The diver who launched himself from the concrete median was not in olympic shape. In a formless black coat and boots, he crafted a smooth arc of surprising fluency (and at the top of this architectural wonder he was scribing with his body—is that the apogee?—he caught my eye with a look so direct it lashed me to the mast of my inadequacy like a judgment) but slammed headlong into the tangential but irrefutable momentum of my not theoretical car. He hadn’t stumbled; he had dived. He hit my car hard. What had I done? I had observed. Because, really, what truth is served by saying I hit him? My safe path was predetermined to collide with his suicidal one, is all. The inevitable occurred. It’s ironic. You spend your life gaming the language and one day you realize—all right, it rear-ends you—that your game is not the essential game. The court calls celebratory toasts intoxicants. Juvenile follies cluster into constellations cops call Priors. The sketch on the police report shows the intersection of our fates, but the district attorney is using bigger paper in all directions. Her diagram includes neighborhoods of my youth, a shot grouping of misdemeanors and minor felonies, and marginal warnings of mayhem should I return to the highways undeterred. I asked about character witnesses, but my lawyer says Forget it, nobody’s witnessed any character. She’s hilarious. Of course I don’t blame the diver; once he launched his body carward, only I had brakes. I failed to undo the future before it could happen. That’s on me. But I ask you, didn’t destiny make two victims when it suicided us both?

Copyright © January 04, 2007