Roadkill on Highway 154

I’m going to drive my Honda Civic
zoom! zoom! over a narrow mountain pass,
and 100 yards downhill from Painted Cave Road
I’m going to lose control and

overcorrect to the right then spinout to the left,
into the uphill lane where the Dodge Ram Pickup
is going to spear me on the passenger-side,
the whole mess coming to rest against the cliff.

I’m going to die and one of my passengers is going to
die, but two of us are going to survive, just barely.
It will be a real mess to clean. Scraping bodies out of
cars and scrubbing blood from pavement is never fun.

The local news will focus on the road closure
and how inconvenient it will be for the living to take
the long way around, through Goleta on the 101,
both Northbound and Southbound.

And in this knowing of my death soon to come, and in
clear view of the chaos I will create in the lives of others,
I now realize that pickup trucks made in the U.S.A.
are much heavier than economy cars made in Japan,

that many dogs will get their dinner a few hours late tonight,
and that being hungry is so much easier than being full.