Tunnel Visions

Their four hooves to my two wheels. We're all going home, but they don't enter the tunnel, the horses. They'll trot over to 3rd Street. Displaced by developers, they walk further north than a few years ago.

Their four wheels to my two wheels. I'm always nervous in the tunnel. If a part fails or I slip and lose control, if I'm lying on the ground in pain, will someone stop to help or even slow down or just drive by and laugh? The tunnel only has one lane for cars. I think most are heading to North Philly, but I don't know.

Coasting downward, hustling upward. A banging base line, a screaming singer, a subtle humming: music from passing vehicles. An open top convertible glides, its passengers giddy. Tinted windows accelerate, their passengers hidden. An unavoidable puddle sprays my back as I ride through it.

They pass me but then I pass them when the light is red at Callowhill. Under the bridge to 95, waiting for green, I wonder whether this one legged man will ask me for change. He does and I give him a quarter. What if an eighteen wheeler loses control up above and crushes us both?

I always peddle slowly on that wide section of 5th Street that follows, basking in a brief sense of accomplishment. The tunnel's just one of ten to twenty minutes, one minute to remind me I've been lucky so far.

Untimely

He drove up 5^th Street every day.  Often times on Saturdays, on the blocks approaching Lehigh Avenue, young girls jumped rope on the sidewalk and sang songs.  He always enjoyed seeing them play together, hearing their innocent voices.

Today he saw people dressed in black gathered outside one of the neighborhood’s many connected row homes.  Attached to and all around a telephone pole were large and small, pink and white and brown teddy bears, dolls, drawings and paintings that only could’ve been made by children.

“No.”  He said it out loud, alone in his small pickup truck.  “Please, no.”

He pulled over to the side of the road, shut the engine.  He’d seen these around the city from time to time, teddy bear vigils, as he referred to them internally, and they always made him feel sick, upset, disgusted.  Violent crimes around the city were bad enough when they involved adults.  But kids, a little girl, he didn’t even know her and yet his heart sank.  Maybe it wasn’t murder, he thought.  Could’ve been a car accident or something else but either way, she’s gone. 

I should go inside, he told himself, pay my respects.  Everyone should stop by and pay their respects, the entire city.  Everyone should do it even though nobody can bring her back.  All the love and regrets in the world won’t bring her back.

He reached for the door handle and nearly opened it, but something stopped him, a sudden realization that he’d only be trying to make himself feel better, that nobody who’d actually known the girl would want him there.  What could he say?  “Hi, I don’t know you, but I drive past your house every day, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss.”  Too weird, he decided.  Too presumptuous. 

He wiped away the beginnings of a tear and turned the ignition.  The radio came back on and a caller argued vehemently with Jon Marks and Sean Brace for the Eagles to sign Plaxico Burress.  He drove the rest of the way to work without listening.  He just imagined the young girls he’d seen last week jumping rope on the sidewalk, singing songs.