Complexities aside,

or feigned naivety,

or a host of other postures

pedestrians enliven

at well traversed intersections

and forgotten alleyways alike,

our lives unlikely

to intersect again.

While memory had already

dropped the content

of the previous phone call,

not so this brush

with your being

and the glance,

your haunting glance,

held for but a second,

encapsulating the grace

and tyranny with which

we draw life, no,

with which we siphon life,

continuously.

Your haunting glance

convinced neither

of the next breath

nor subscribed

to assumed comforts,

exposed the starkness

of warfare in the midst

of a typical rush hour.

I will never learn the context,

but instantly knew

your eyes had

just seen or we’re headed

to a showdown with death.

Thankfully I remembered,

I should pick up some take out

on the way home.

That’s what the last call was about.