I am not a single person moving through a single story.
I am a multiplicity, a sprawling bush of events
sprouting new branches. This version of me took
a left turn at the intersection. Another version took
a right turn. That version avoided the catastrophe
that greeted this version shortly after making
the ill-fated left turn. I had wanted to turn right
and had even engaged a right turn signal when
for reasons I have not yet fathomed I turned
left, I turned left and moments after turning left
I hit a deer. I hit a doe, a female deer. Luckily
I wasn’t going fast and the deer bounced off
my hood, somehow sustained no injury,
and sprang off into the woods. While I felt
great relief at not creating horror on the road,
my heart began to beat so fast from the shock
of the encounter, it triggered a heart attack.
I felt like a truck had run into my chest.
What happened next I cannot recall, save
that I heard sirens and saw flashing lights—
a man wearing blue latex gloves with hairy
forearms worked me over. An ambulance
drove me to Emergency and paramedics
wheeled me inside. I didn’t think I was going
to die for some reason, though later I was told
that were it not for a passing driver, who
saw my car roll off the road, I would have
likely died. When I asked who it was
that saved me, a nurse said it was a man
who had taken a wrong turn and moments
before had almost hit a deer crossing the road.
Sicilian Canadian poet and storyteller Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada. Recent works appear in Cafe Irreal, The Journal of Compressed Arts, and E-ratio.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 