The sky was the color of a fresh bruise outside the car window.
My brother whistled “Yellow Submarine” while I sang along.
Mother kept both hands on the steering wheel
while dad tried to invent games for the long trip ahead.
We were there, in the middle of our lives,
except somehow the middle turned into the end.
I saw the truck coming only at the last second,
before everything went black.
I didn’t know where my body was,
as if it wasn’t there anymore.
And then I started seeing everything that ever made me,
flying around like the brushing of a moth’s wings.

I am made of
my father’s voice and my mother’s touch.
The nights when I asked God to make me pretty, and
the mornings when all my faith crippled onto the floor.
I am made of the sound of my father’s footsteps
at five in the morning as he slips out in his running shoes
to catch the first trickles of sunlight.
Of my brother’s whistling that never ceases.
Spaghetti nights in candle light and
the times when I ran away from home,
pen and notebook in my hand
and found peace in the hidden corners of nature.
I am made of the people I’ve met in books,
my mother’s whispers as we lay wrapped under five layers
of blankets in the secrets of the night,
and of the subway ride after my first kiss.
I am made of feeling real and feeling there.
Of wanting to be a part of this world.
I am made of the times I cried in the shower
so no one would hear me, and midnight talks with my best friend
when we let go of all the pretensions and confessed things
we never would in the nakedness of sunlight.
I am made of the first day of ballet and the first time
I realized I loved to dance.
I am made of mute conversations with my brother,
the anonymous extraordinaries I’ve met along the way,
and secretly loving school because
it was the only thing I was good at.
I am made of the first poem I ever wrote,
the times my dad and I danced with no music playing.
I am made of summer afternoons spent eating grapes,
of the tough times I’ve conquered and the things I regret.

I saw everything I am made of,
unmake itself.