Walk from Somerset, Plum, to Paterson St.

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Kaelyn Twaskas

 

Go past the train station and philosophy department,
brave the beating wind, and make
a solemn vow with your fellow laypersons
not to jaywalk

Go past the throngs of nurses who carry takeout lunch,
surgical masks, and flower bouquets,
the doctors who wear yankees caps, phillies hats, and
tired eyes

Go past the half-crescent valet parking line,
filled with sputtering exhaust pipes, hissing engines, and
trapped trucks that plead “reverse! reverse! reverse!”
to the fervent honks of a trailing congregation of cars 

Go past the five separate steeples
steeped in cigarettes, marijuana, and coffee breath of
loiterers under gleaming power lines asway
like a boat on water

Go past the empty fountain outside the
children’s hospital, pause briefly
before the students gathered in the stained school window of
St. Ladislaus Elementary and

Turn left, walk the downward slope of Plum Street
let the wind’s gentle hand push the back of your legs forward
until its inevitable betrayal:
a gust in front of you,
a slap in the face so hard
you shut your eyes, propel backward 

but try to keep an eye open
as you stumble onto the Paterson Street crosswalk,
where various high-pitched tunes
collide into each other
and trip over themselves repeating,
screeching, singing their song
surrounded by concrete hospitals and rusty elevated
train platforms and
no one
else

now, tell me, does that crosswalk scare you
or do you think it’s beautiful?

 

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Kaelyn Twaskas is majoring in philosophy and political science, with plans to graduate in 2026. She is from Fanwood, New Jersey, and has one cat, Lilly. Kaelyn loves commas and semicolons; she is not so fond of complete sentences.