Did She

When she stepped into the traffic did she see the oncoming, judge the distance; the fleet footedness of her thoughts calculating the crossing, or did she read the red end of her life the way a deer might caught in a blind light, paralyzed by decisions? I watched, perhaps other eyes were on her too far away from the moment to save or rescue her time. When planes break apart the passengers fall out of it thinking, calculating, & dying before the end. Possums lay in the road gambling on deadness to fend off an 18 wheelers. Did a ghost of a thought push her back, keep her swaying like a cartoon road-runner on the curb edge, or did she plunge into the truck gambling that she would always be a moment away? Was she already lost as she unraveled a tangle at the other side of town. This we cannot say, for most of us reflexively looked away.