Member-only story
Grace on a Bad Day
When grace finds you, she will crack you open. If only just a little, enough to let the dark seep out. It will be such a small thing, but it will matter. She found me at the wheel of my car, traveling from here to who-knows-where, in the throes of a full and fearsome panic. It was the age of my unraveling, when I had forgotten how to be here, how to breathe and stay on two feet. I was a mess, every day, and not a hot one. A tepid mess, dragging through the hours, grasping at split ends.
Traffic was standstill, cars idling all around me on a tiny city bridge, a familiar situation I had managed many times without incident. But these were the days of incident and, as I clutched the wheel hard and felt the panic monster roar and rise within, I knew. It was big and I would lose. There would be no grace. I would die, here on this bridge, in this car. It would be ugly, the jaws of my undoing voracious and at my throat.
The light was brass, my breath shallow and ragged with terror. The chill sweat, the beast keening within: Let me out. Time static and eternal, the world pressing on all sides as engines hummed and functional strangers calmly functioned in their motorized sanctuaries. Eating, singing, picking their noses. As the terrible scene was reaching its climax — my body vibrating, panic pitched high and raising the death blow — I turned my head slowly to the left and saw a school bus…
