Smash.
This one guy
sideswiped that other guy
and didn’t look back.
As I turned I saw
their green glass littering
the black asphalt.
At the crosswalk nearby
no one seemed
to have noticed.
.
When I saw
the banged up car
this morning,
pulling in to what
is usually my spot
in the group parking structure,
I had only one thought,
that the car,
looked like my father’s
from my middle childhood.
.
I remember that car.
Before it was his,
it was my mother’s,
and I think it may have been
my uncle’s before that.
It was never mine,
my dad sold it,
yet here was its twin.
.
This car (like my father’s)
was white.
This car, like mine,
was a little banged up.
But while mine has some
(fixed) troubles
in the front,
this car,
had a visibly
scraped up rear.
.
I know the driver,
I wish I didn’t,
but I need not
look back
with regret.
I faced my problems
head on.
.
I was the one
who learned to drive
first.
I had that parking spot
first.
But when I followed,
the car so much
like my father’s,
out of the group parking lot
and into the sun,
I was behind.
When I switched lanes,
I was ahead.
.
As I emerged from
the parking lot
and into the street,
I saw the sideswipe.
Smash.
The two cars
hit each other
and neither looked back.
But I looked back.