Muscle Memory

The hill was steeper than the mirror showed.

I found the gear and let the clutch plate slip,

but as the tires bit the salted road,

my left leg started to tremble and skip.

It wasn't me, but the meat and the bone,

remembering the way the asphalt smelled

when the oil and the rain and the ozone

were the only secrets the wreckage held.

Ten years of silence in the frontal lobe,

while the calf muscle keeps the tally in red.

I sat there gripped in a cold, white robe,

driving a car that stayed perfectly dead.