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the girl i did not run over
looks at me with eyes that say
that i am part of the problem,
when i could have been her solution,
looks at me like she’s blaming me
for swerving away, like she’s measured
every one of her steps from her door
to the curb, and i am the one thing she failed
to account for.

i almost double back to try and tell her
all the same things that i have been told
but i do not. her feet are too heavy, by now.
her stomach too hollow. she does not
need more empty words to swallow, she does not need
stop signs or yield signs or ‘for the love of god
think of everyone you are leaving behind’ signs.

i do not double back but i think of her eyes
for the longest time, think about them
so much i pick them out of every obituary
i read and every graveyard i pass. she has become
a marble mausoleum to me, a girl with too little
blood holding onto the souls of all the people
who people like me bulldoze over. i swerved
for her, but there must be countless other fingerprints
stenciled on my shoes. we are
reckless, sometimes, in our freedom.
we are ignorant, sometimes, to our
rearview mirrors.

but i am not sorry for the minutes
i bought you. i swerved and you can haunt
me and you can become one more thing i hoist onto my shoulders,
one more truth i try my hardest to erase with pencils
that never write enough, and you can hate me all you want
with your eyes and you can dust off your kneecaps and walk
on, but this time you cannot make me drive straight, you cannot
make me bruise and break your body, you cannot make me
sorry.

if this is a sin, it is one that i could learn to carry,
the sin of missing. the sin of almost.