I drive past it every day on my way to and from work.
Asphalt, gleaming chrome, balloons.
Someone died there.
I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that business is conducted on this crime scene, that handshakes are exchanged over the place she breathed her last.

There was yellow tape around it for 48 hours, no one allowed to walk where the blood still cried out.
But now, business as usual. The voice that rings loudest says, Come, trade in your car, get a new one today!

A mail truck passed me on the street.
I felt something strange - fear.
An innocuous vehicle transformed into a weapon of mass destruction, the uniformed worker within…she haunts me still.

Bill, magazine, card - what was she carrying when she met evil on her route?
Mail carriers - benignly camouflaged into the sidewalks they walk. Now, they wear targets.
The block where you live? Someone died there.

A family - husband, wife, two children (girl, boy) get in the car for an afternoon outing.
They leave their new house and travel the quiet two lane road to the stop light around the corner.

Glass shatters -
American dream becomes American nightmare.
The terror of the moment not divided but multiplied by four - husband, wife, girl, boy.
Trauma is no respecter of persons.

And now when they leave their house, a family of three, the two lane road is there -
Taking people to work, school and play, but taking these three back to the reality that
Someone died there.