Beneath the brief accounting
everyone agrees
that corner
at just that time of day
this time of year
the sun hangs bold
deep against the sky
blinding
making the turn
impossible
to navigate
she should have known
should have waited
should have yielded
what was so important
she stepped
wrong

She is given a name and nothing else
but a white canvas tent
to cover the shame
of death
in the crosswalk

Nothing about her life … with all its mess of love and loss and triumph and tragedy and hope and wonder and accomplishment and loneliness. Nothing about the recent death of her second husband or the older death of her younger daughter. Nothing about how she loved the rain and the moss and her family and her friends and her job and her dog and her house and her small garden. Nothing about how proud she was of carrying on in spite of everything. Nothing about how she danced alone to sad songs until she spun consolation from tears. Nothing about the small jeweled turtle left glinting on a windowsill. Nothing about how she pulled the sheets up to her cheek and kept her feet carefully aligned so as not to change her impression of him. Nothing about how she was in the right.

majority of one

Instead … it is said … the driver never saw her, had no idea what he’d hit, and so continued, smashing her flat and lifeless beneath his low-slung car at a speed onlookers estimated to be between 5 and 10 miles per hour.

a safe speed, everyone agrees
small step from here to there
beneath the accounting
fold up the tent
we’re done with empathy and inquiries
under the sun
all that innocence requires

is survival