A day late, and always short on dollars, here’s my shot at PAD 11, a challenge to write a poem involving the phrase “In case…”

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In Case You Didn’t Know

The lady in front of you, crawling,
intensely tight, lacking a gas pedal
is not attempting to make you late
for work. She had eye surgery two
weeks ago, and not one of her four
children was willing to take her

to the doctor today, that the boy
presently trudging across the bridge,
looking up as if looking for a space-
ship is not contemplating suicide
by jumping off the bridge as you have
concluded, mostly because you
have never seen someone walk
across that bridge and he does look
spaced and gone from this world,

that when you are thinking you
are a failure, you might be wrong,
that when you also feel gone from
this world, you are here, and some
slice of fucking goodness makes
you persist in this increasingly

futile activity, that sometimes, no
matter how hateful some may seem,
sometimes, some people like you,
that they are battling demons and
they grip tightly to prevent you from
seeing this in them, but you don’t
talk and no one talks to you,

so in case you didn’t know, you are
not alone, but life is the loneliest
plot created by those before us.

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