Alive

In a bubble the size of a stadium, it’s just dusk. Emergency lights bounce off the fireman’s coat. I stand next to him and notice my reflection in his eyes. He looks from crumpled-up car to me and asks “You are refusing an ambulance?” 

I know I am in an altered state; the impact was sudden. Events have slowed, and part of me is aware that time has shifted into a lower gear, or different gear, or all gears operating simultaneously. Around the crash scene my bubble-stadium puffs out like a sail catching wind. Through my skin and pulse I perceive, but cannot quite understand, how time is corporeal; our bodily sensations inform us of time’s horizontalness. 

It took 2 seconds to realize the car flying towards me was really flying towards me. My car is toast, it looks like a soda can that’s been crushed by a giant boot, and surprisingly, I am OK, although my mind is blown, and it’s very strange that I can feel the bubble of space we are in, and I believe it has something to do with time, and my prior concept of time has dissolved and in its place is this shifting/breathing shape of here/ now, like a giant lung we are inside of, the present ripped open, yes! it’s a gift! though I do not wish this sort of trauma on anyone, but everything is possible, right now, like the place Emily Dickinson dwells, and I fall in love with the fireman when he asks “You are refusing an ambulance?” I say, “I am walking and talking! I am alive!” And then I laugh. And then he laughs.