Cheryl Wilder
right /rīt
verb. restore to a normal correct condition or situation: As in, there is no way to right the crash.
Nothing to turn back over. We didn’t capsize as much as we shattered. I want to right my life,
meaning, I want to hug my friend until we fall over, jump in his car on the way to lunch shifts
overlooking the ocean, be inside the weightlessness of a twenty-year-old body. But there is only a
new normal, a new correct condition: My worth an open wound on the body of the masses.
Slipped
We drank
and danced
in dive bars.
As we walked to the car
humidity glistened toxic
and you threw me the keys,
you threw them to me,
those rigid teeth
in-between my fingers. You slipped
in the passenger seat
and I took the wheel.
I took the wheel and you put on California Dreamin’.
We sang.
I swayed my shoulders
to the pop harmony
until the rain-slick curve
took the car
took the wheel
and we slipped
until laughter was slapped
from our bodies.
II
Air entered and left my nose.
Opening my eyes, I recognized
the steering wheel, the dashboard
and draped over the center console
a limp body.
Curly hair bunched around a collared button-up
still sweaty from dancing.
I held my breath
leaned close to the side of your face
closed my eyes as if
I could disappear
pleaded, with wet words
as tears dripped onto my tongue,
Get up, get out of the car.
Please get up.
Pleeeaaase wake up,
your current of breath my only answer.
I wanted to run. I had to get help.
I entered the June air and froze
under yellow streetlights
that beat
on
and off.
III
I stood in the middle
of the street, the car wrapped
around a pole, you still
inside. I heard sirens grow
close, thought of my sheets, how
cool they are in the humid hot
summer, and wanted to lie down
between them as I lost the last moment
of a person that was me.
from the scene, you were lifted
carefully, I’m sure. They checked
jumpsuit, bustled around my purpose
my meaning and I didn’t
mean to, I didn’t mean to,
I didn’t—
but what does that change?
I wouldn’t struggle against handcuffs
never challenged the paperwork process
could only hear blood
curdling in the background.
“right /rīt” was first published in the author’s book, Singing Riptide (Press 53)
“Slipped” was first published in the author’s book, Anything That Happens (Press 53)
Cheryl Wilder’s decades-long reckoning with the decision to drive drunk, which left her friend and passenger severely and permanently injured, taught her that self-forgiveness must lead to genuine moral repair. As a poet, Cheryl uses the personal lyric to “translate” her reckoning into language, an active taking-hold of her emotional life. Her collection, Anything That Happens (Press 53), is an acute examination of shame in the aftermath of the crash. Its companion collection, Singing Riptide (Press 53), supported by the North Caroling Arts Council, is her journey from all-consuming shame to self-realization and belonging. Cheryl is an arts and culture leader in the community-led initiative For Alamance, inspiring her to “translate” collective crises into language that explores moral injury and the need for mass forgiveness.