A Body in the Street

She lied there gently across the rain. Her soft, brown hair flowed back in silence. Brown eyes searched the night, but only darkness was seen. Headlights flashed across skin, and tires sped on by, threatening to come close. Time paused, but only for a moment. Then, nothing, but she still remained.

I saw her a moment later. Cars cruised by like she wasn’t even there. Drivers were consumed with point A to point B. They just didn’t care and refused to look. If they looked, they too would have stopped, but they didn’t. And traffic was crunching close to my bumper, so I couldn’t slam on my brakes. I just drove by, saying a quiet prayer.

Someone would come. You would think that someone would come, but that train of thought would always be late to the station. Nobody wants to be a hero, and no one wants to get involved. We have become selfish, and still, no one has come. But she still thinks as she slips away that someone will.

The rain too has now fallen silent, and still she lies there. Somewhere in the darkness, there are flashing lights, but the emergency has come and gone. It’s just another body lying in the street, and the cars are just cruising by. And her hair is now covered with mud and debris, and her bones are broken. Her eyes are wide, but they capture nothing, no one. It’s just a shell now for us to lift when convenient and return to the earth, forgetting that a life was so endlessly lost, and we just drive on.