We were one that night-
bumper to bumper, metal against metal
dented, crumpled.
my side tangled with yours.
I heard you shout over blaring sirens:
Are you okay?
Just shaken. How about you?
The same.
Turning the black curtain around us
red and blue, red and white,
the police and firefighters arrived.
With the Jaws of Life,
they ripped into us. They pulled us apart.
Once out, they enveloped us
in wool. Underneath soft blankets,
they took our statements,
talked to the witnesses.
What did they say? We saw two become one?
After that night together
we never spoke again.
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025