Left ripped open on Cemetery Road—
fraternity prank,
complicit,
you deserve this darkness
Snow’s white blanket highlights your shame
You can walk back to your dorm or you can call your mother—
there are still bars left on your cell phone—miraculous reception
You can start walking the farm roads, parallel to I95,
your cold bare feet burn into numbness
you can hitchhike downstate—
You can look for your car keys someone threw at you
leaving a bloody cleft on your dried cherry lips
You remember the black void
but not where you parked your car
You remember a farmhouse light then the nothing
John Wheelock, first cemetery inhabitant
laughs at your fever while he died from one
—Or you can wait till morning
go to class, hungover and crusty with ice and heat—
like it never happened
Miraculous deception
Vicki Iorio