After the Accident

“I wish I could put my life on pause,” she said.
“Freeze time. This moment.

The sky such a blue it makes me ache.”
I wiggled my edges deeper into the sand,
some kind of reptile,

absorbing the heat into my skin.
Into my cold bones.
Before me, the sun jumping off the glass-green sea
gives way to the cool clarity of twisted metal.
And always,
that hooded dark angel screaming toward me
in every blink
of my lazy, lizard eye.
“No. No you don’t,” I replied.