The Wreckage

Once I drove a car

with no brakes.

It was a very scary experience

for five years.

It didn’t end

badly but the screeches

still keep me up

at night, hands trembling

on the steering wheel.

I still feel the sting even

in my sleep, that one

tenacious dream of impact,

a sound, blinding, and then

the road rash, broken glass

embedded in the weeds,

so unruly and unwilling

to follow rules,

at the shoulder’s end,

the hem, the vestibule,

an antechamber to waking.

Source: The Boy with One Hundred Cars (1966), by Inger Sandberg and Lasse Sandberg.