She dreamed of it again. The torrents of shattered glass. The sickening crunch of metal. The stark contrast of the crimson rivulets against her best friend’s already paling face. She remembers screaming, but her best friend never did. And she still wakes up screaming, but her best friend never woke up at all.
~

She pushes green beans bathed in butter aimlessly around her light blue plate, unable to conjure the energy to life a forkful to her cracked, bleeding lips. She had begun biting them shortly after the accident. Her mom says something to her, but she can’t conjure the energy to hear. And her brother nudges her lightheartedly with the very edge of his elbow, but she is vacant. While everyone else finishes their last bite, she wishes she had died as well.
~

A constellation of bruises decorates her thin arms, translucent skin. She traces the spaces between them, completely aware of the red and purple welts forming on her cheekbones from just moments before. She deserves it. No matter how hard she hit herself, it would never be as hard as “death on impact”. No matter how hard she hit herself, it would never be hard enough.
~

They let her see the body. She didn’t sleep for three days. Nothing erased the image of her limp shoulders, pale lips, blue veined eyelids doused in mawkish mascara. Not the burn of cocaine in her nose or the seemingly permanent after taste of 11 shots of whiskey. Even when the room began spinning and she couldn’t remember her own middle name, she still remembered hers. She still remembered how she hadn’t held her hand. She still remembered how she never got to say goodbye.
~

Sometimes she sleeps beside her best friend’s grave. Sometimes she wishes it was her own grave. And as her fingers traced the letters of a name she knows so well, she realized she wasn’t alone. His voice filled some of the emptiness of the night, but none of the emptiness in her aching heart. “You know it’s not your fault”. She didn’t respond. “You weren’t even driving”. It didn’t matter, not to her. He sat beside her and buried his fingers in the sand that the grass dare not grow in yet, his fingers that had once entwined with her best friend’s. His lips that had kissed a dead girl’s spoke again, “She’d hate that she did this to you.” She could see he was crying, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t tell him she couldn't blame a dead girl, she could only blame herself.
~