Survival

I have seen the ones who climb from the wreck, hair smelling of gasoline and rain, eyes wide as if they’ve just been born. I have seen the others, still in the wreckage, leaning back against a seatbelt’s cradle, breathing as if it costs too much to keep going. Some Will Rise to the Challenge, Others Will Not. Second chances are not handed out like paper cups of water at a race. You have to bleed for them, take them in your teeth, tear the flesh from the bone of your moment. Some rise, stunned, their knees shaking, their grief like a warm animal under the arm. They run toward the light, even if it’s only the dim lamp of a stranger’s porch. Others turn inward, folding their pain like laundry, sliding it back into the drawer. The difference is not will— sometimes it is only breath, or the lack of it.