Reality Jolt

Published in Indiana Voice Journal, October 2016

  

Ragtop down, wind blowing through our hair, we were girlfriends catching up

after 15 years. The steep mountainous curve loomed ahead—scarcely

registered—until, like a robot programmed for destruction,

she drove us STRAIGHT. Off a cliff.

Surely there's an embankment, a rail . . .

No words adequately describe the horror

of the next instant. The car vanished.

We found ourselves suspended

in midair with chubby

Popeye-like arms,

hovering in a huddle hug

over the hateful lushness

of many meadows

forming

a mammoth valley

miles beneath us.

So, this is it? 

This!

. . . my final

seconds

on

earth?

Ice-frozen inside the terror,

I spotted

                       

            my lingerie chest!

Grappling with reality,

it occurred to me . . .

I’d woken up !

Denise C. Buschmann

March 26, 2014