I was 18,
had only started driving
and didn’t realise a main road
was ahead.
I just snoozed my way across
—thought I had the right of way,
no less.
I grasped the madness of my fault
as I sailed across the bitumen.
—A streaker across a warzone;
some bird through the blades of a turbine.
I could have been crushed.
I was never in control.
I was nothing. I could have been killed.
Are we ever in control?
Our passions—anger, sadness—come and go.
They’re not in our control.
We’re told, of course, they are,
but trimming hedges back will never kill a root.
Falling in love and breaking up:
they, too, are not in our control.
Even times I’ve done the breaking up:
I wasn’t really in control
of anything
at all.
The moves I make to cook my food:
I do them out of hunger
or habit: both out of my control.
Being born, my earliest tears,
or all the tears I’ve ever cried:
no control.
Then the time
I almost died
on some main road.
We’re not in control.
It calls for forgiveness, really,
of everyone.
Even yourself.
I think we learn to forgive
when we see
we’re none of us
in control of our lives;
or, we learn how to love
when we see
we’re not
even truly
alive.