When crossing the street I check both ways
four times
because I am afraid
that one day
a middle aged man who has been
at the bar all afternoon,
avoiding the wife he’s no longer in love with,
will miss the red light
because he’s texting her
that he had to stay late at the office
and that when I step onto the crosswalk
the grill of his suburban will fold around my body
creating an imprint of my profile,
nose and all,
and that by the time the ambulance arrives
it will be too late,
and no one will know
to cut off my pinkie
in honor of the pinkie promise
I made her
under the glow in the dark stars pasted to her ceiling.
