Point of Impact

When you left this world, I was
driving back roads that coiled 
through pine-shadow & crooked

fenceline: a rural paper route
in the hours that the whole town
laid dreaming. Moonlight stained 

Lake Sequoyah silver, lit the pupils 
blinking from the ditches iridescent.
Windows rolled all the way down, 

I was swallowed by stars. When 
violet dawn licked at the edge
of the horizon, I hit a deer for the first

time. A buck that seemed just as 
morning-dazed as I was. He bounded
off in barely a blink, & I was alone

again. Back home, eyes gritty 
from dusty night air & the sky
your favorite shade of pink, I see

the proof of him in warped metal,
a crater left from the heft of him. 
Then I got news of you: a small plane,

an engine failure, and you, falling,
somewhere above the woods 
of South Carolina. I had the urge

to scour my room for evidence
of you: a packet of polaroids, 
a second-hand cross stitch, glass

vials of glitter and googly eyes. 
It didn’t feel like enough. I wished
for your voice, your cackling

laugh, bottled up to keep close.
What I had instead was the deer,
alive—the evidence of him

unmistakable. I feel a twin 
hollow somewhere in my chest,
an impression formed on impact, 

the sheer force of you changing
the shape of me. I palm it like 
a lucky buckeye, learn the shape

of your mark until it’s instinct. 
It must be some kind of alchemy,
or magic: the ways we are always,

always creating each other