It is night.
It is night.

I went to a party.
I went to the grocery store.

I had a drink, or 2, or 3…
I bought food and groceries for my family.

It is late.
It is late.

I get behind the steering wheel, my friends clambering around me, I feel kinda tipsy.
I get behind the steering wheel after tucking my sleeping children into the backseat.

The road is deserted.
There is no one out driving this late.

I decide to have a little bit of fun with my friends.
Why are those lights ahead of me swerving?

And then I see the lone car.
And then the SUV is right in front of me.

I swerve too late.
It is barreling towards me.

I honk, I swear I did.
There’s a deafening blaring, but what can I do?

I am petrified; I see the woman’s face, stricken, right before it happens.
All I see are lights, blinding lights, all I feel is crushing.

The windshield shatters, glass is cutting my face.
I feel like a balloon being popped and twisted and cut and stretched.

There is car all around me, pinning me in.
I can hear my children screaming.

I see red flashing lights of an ambulance.
The creeping, powerful darkness is taking over.

Oh god.
Oh, God.


My friends.
My babies, my babies.


I scream for help.
I scream because of the agony.

The Jaws of Life are freeing me; piece by piece.
I’m bleeding, dying, I am unable to move.

I am carted away on a stretcher, I see my friends, and a small child, who is crying for her brother and mommy.
I am dragged away in a body bag.

The cold hard bars of prison wrap around me.
The freshly dug earth embraces my body.

A child is motherless, there is a lady in the ground who lies next to her dead baby, and somewhere is a stretch of country road, in the middle of nowhere, splattered with the blood of the innocent.
I was not the one who had drunk and drove, yet my son and I were the ones to die, our blood mixed with the leftover alcohol that was consumed so carelessly that fateful night.