You only noticed the way the ice gleamed in the sunshine as the car began to fishtail. It turned left, then right, and then you realized that your hands were on the steering wheel but they didn’t matter too much; like the pearls on your neck, they were accessories. And you realized that your body was in the car but it didn’t matter too much. You thought about that word: fishtail. So that when the hood smashed into the guardrail you were already floating, body weightless and limbs slowly moving. The seaweed swayed under your toes, always reaching itself up towards some unattainable height. Fish darted in and out of coral reefs the color of old bones.

Opening your mouth you let the water in, let it rush past your throat. Salt shock to your taste buds, and water filling the lungs. Pouring through your bronchial tree, flooding alveoli. This is when you awakened to paramedics and yelling, to cold metal against your skin and beeping machines humming.

You know that feeling when you’re lying down but you’re actually pacing, when your hands look folded in your lap but really you’re wringing them incessantly, until the skin chafes? This is how it feels the first few days afterwards. You ask your lover if there were minnows found in the driver’s seat. If the doctors had to pick kelp out of your hair. He says no, but you know. You know.