wildscape. literary journal

Featured Poet of Issue 6 – Read Interview Here!

Crosswalk Between Worlds
by Veronica Tucker

The teenager on the gurney
could be any kid leaving a birthday party,
walking home from a game,
standing under a streetlight
telling a joke that makes his friends
fold in half with laughter.

Instead he arrives under fluorescent noon
carried by four sets of hands,
shirt cut open,
skin slick with the language of impact.
The hole in his chest is smaller
than the worry on his mother’s face.

You do what the protocol requires.
Hands on the wound,
voice calling for blood,
fingers finding the line between
here and not here.
There is a rhythm to this work
that you do not want to have learned.

Outside, his friends gather
in a loose orbit around the entrance,
hoodies pulled up
as if fabric could hide their fear.
They stare at the ambulance bay doors
like a curtain that refuses to lift. 

Somewhere across town
your own child stands at a crosswalk,
backpack heavy with notebooks,
hair still damp from the morning shower.
The light turns green for the cars,
red for the walking figure.
She knows to wait, to look both ways,
to listen for danger that has an engine.

There is no signal
for a bullet aimed down the wrong street.
No sign that reads
caution, stray anger ahead.
You think of this
while you press another line of medication
into the vein of a boy
who will not get old enough
to forget what it felt like
to be sixteen.

When the monitor finally settles
into a flat, arguing silence,
someone turns it off.
In that instant
the room is full of a quiet
that sounds exactly like shouting
in a language you do not yet speak.

Later, you will drive home
through a neighborhood
where children ride scooters
in wide circles at the edge of the road.
You will stop at a crosswalk
for a girl who looks nothing like your patient,
everything like him.
She will wave.
You will wave back,
hand lifting once
before it returns to the wheel,
knuckles white
on the way to your own front door.

about the author // Veronica Tucker