✨MONTHLY MENTAL HEALTH POETRY POST✨ the cracked windshield

i remember the first time i saw you. at the time you were nothing but a small breach, located just in the top right corner of my windshield, that damned windshield.

i couldnt specifically place why you happened, maybe a kid hit and ran my car with a baseball, or maybe you just appeared with no specific cause.

maybe the years of bugs that splattered against the window got to be too much. or the transparent awareness of the world. and naturally there was a moment of weakness, where the glass just couldnt hold its form, where just out of nowhere its natural beautiful structure collapsed under extreme stress.

but honestly who knows.

whatever the cause, no matter how hard i tried, i couldnt get you out of my mind.

you were constantly there. lingering in my peripheral vision, always in the corner of my eye. prodding, a pestering nick, knacking in the background.

i came to dwell on you, you were on my mind day in, day out.

always there.

from the moment the sun set behind the foothills,
to the consuming darkness of a smoggy, cataclysmic night sky,
and the breach of the sunrise
and the moment i woke up
and tried to get out of bed
and failed
and gave in.

out of no where, one day, on a crisp fall morning, just as i was taking a drive.

you spread.

expanding across the seams, stretching and tearing the very fabric of my windshield.

in a way a part of me broke along with you.
but for a minute all the damage was done.
and my brain drifted elsewhere
and i gave myself time to heal
but you were still there.
and soon enough,
yet again,
you were on my mind once again.

from the moment the sun set behind the foothills,
to the consuming darkness of a smoggy, cataclysmic night sky,
and the breach of the sunrise
and the moment i woke up
and tried to get out of bed
and failed
and yet again gave in.

only this time i was broken and lost and misguided.
and something about the windshield
and the fracture
and the spread
drove me strait into the Jersey bump
crumpling the front end of my Camry.

yet i was whole and unharmed and safe and confused.
with only a seatbelt burn still etched onto my right side.
and i heard stillness in silence
then chaos in sirens
and eventually i was taken away.

at this point now,
the worst of it was over.

and i wasnt cracked and broken,
but instead lucky and healing.
and somehow you helped me realize
that the problem wasnt the windshield
or the fracture
or the spread
or the crash
no
the problem was me
the problem was always just me.

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