Eva Alter

“Like a teenage car wreck, No survivors, just God, Breathing on the last moments Of the child, living.” - Chronic, Cynthia Cruz I lost my inner boundary first, like Rodanthe’s eroding sealine—its saber-winds a sandbar’s checkmate—my cascading teenage calamity a cyclic collision. T-boned car- skeleton—strangled fate an echoed wreck: [Cursed contortion conundrum] No inner rudder—no means to grasp a future—no survivors left from that seventh grade interoceptive hit: just nerves looping imagined rescue by God— We never had our own frontiers: pulse patterned breathing at once in Mom’s womb—twin revenants—on the cusp of adulthood your amygdala blew.