Two weeks later, he found the tiny ball of glass
nested in the carpet. Surprised by its blue tint,
he rolled its smoothness between his thumb and forefinger
--a perfect sphere. He had not known
that the windows were designed to shatter
into pellets made to fly outward,
littering the street like hail.

Even after the hurtling of the car stopped,
the immense sound spun around him. Something
like movement fighting with space.
While he sat on the curb in front of the wreck,
the sound was pushed out of him
by the one long, frightened note of the horn
that had to be silenced by wire-cutters.

For days, when he turned his head,
he caught the smell of dead machine.
That faded too. Now he only had this ball of glass
--a grain of sand, a child's marble--
that sat in his hand perfectly, like every realm
he had not known.