Why I bought a race car

Imagine a girl just twenty years tall. 
She never learned how to move slowly
rushing through moments and minutes
with courage and conviction and
lightning-quick decisions.

If she’d moved a little slower
looked a little closer
would she have seen it coming?

Could she have hit the brakes — sliding
skidding, screeching to a stop fast 
enough

Before she ran out of road and fell
slowly, steadily, towards the ground.

No —

She didn’t fall, she was pushed. 
Not by hands that touched her with love 
or caressed her with wild passion and abandon.

But, with the soured touch of power
of a man who saw what he wanted
and took what he saw
with no regard for the only word that mattered…

NO.

This girl, just twenty years tall, for the first time she stood still.

Once fueled by passion, plowing forward through life at a hundred miles an hour, stood stalled on the side of her highway longing for power.

—

So. I trade helplessness for horsepower.

I breathe in octane and brake dust and burnt rubber
and for a moment it overpowers the scent of your breath on my body while I lay unmoving.

So I reclaim moving.

But my legs are not fast enough
and my body fails me again.

I shroud myself in two tonnes of armour
steel and locks and solitude
because here, you can not touch me.

This is where I take my stand, my battle, my war.

My body is the land I defend — my sovereignty, spirit, and solace.

My throttle is my ammunition, and with my foot to the floor I fire.

Here, in this moment is where my power lives — 
not of horses, but of woman. 
Pulsing quietly between the pushes of pistons
purring softly under the roar of my exhaust.

I push metal and bones to the brink of control. 
I. Am. In. Control.

I bathe in the power like an oasis
parched from the drought of trauma.

I breathe in like I haven’t breathed in years.

Because I haven't.