I said please get up, but my voice
was flattened by rubber meeting blacktop,
by metal pushing with haste
through air and the scent of blood.

In spring, fresh fingers of roadside
weeds reach from the thawing
ground, unfurl from concrete sleep,
tell themselves to surrender to sunlight;

this is called the green up,
when roads warm from spring’s
relief and plants alongside beckon
to the animals in their prayer and periphery –

and from the periphery bodies move
to silence the winter felt in their bones,
until hunger meets steel, until their bodies
are a prayer, until until until –

And that leads me here

on my knees in a halo of dandelion,
throwing my voice into the question
a body makes when hit by a car,
their mouths a throne of green.