For Carly:

(-My friend Carly really doesn't like cats. This is for her-)

I was on foot…
She was in a Subaru…
It was a 4-way, neighborhood intersection…
quiet, never busy, I will go out on a limb and estimate that it saw roughly 10 cars an hour—peak hours, mind you.

She didn’t have a stop sign and I wasn’t in a hurry…
I waved her to go.
She waved me to go.
I waved her…
She waved me.
This went on for at least three whole cycles.
Portland drivers are funny like that.
On the rare occasion when I am behind a wheel…
I am not a Portland driver.

I stood defiant and playful, crossing my arms to signal that I wasn’t going anywhere…
At least not until her fly-eye green Subaru passed me by.

This was all playful, mind you.

The glare on her windshield obscured her appearance,
other than the fact that she had pigtails and thick-rimmed old lady glasses.
This signified cute to me, but that is an unnecessary aside.

Game up, she was in more of a hurry than I was, or less patient.
She accelerated through the intersection a little too fast,
As she was parallel with me, I saw that she was cute-ish, but not as much as the pig-tails and glasses let on.
She looked at me and smiled as she passed and then promptly ran over a cat.
I didn’t see what type it was.
I will go out on a limb and estimate that it died on impact.

I stepped off of the curb as her brakes screeched,
walked on by,
and went to get that coffee that I really, really needed.